» Chinese stock markets PRACTICAL STOCK INVESTING

I got home late last night and flipped on the TV to watch baseball. What came on first was Bloomberg TV, where reporters in London (?) and Hong Kong were exchanging near-hysterical comments about the declining Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets.

The facts couldn’t have been much more at odds with their dire pronouncements. Yes, the markets were down by 2% – 3%. Yes, a small number of stocks were limit down. But the markets were relatively stable and trading was orderly. Given, however, that the main concern for global investors, as well as Chinese participants in the domestic stock markets, is to have China shrink the still-large amount of margin debt outstanding without a market collapse, overnight market action in Shanghai and Shenzhen was a very positive development. As it turns out, although the markets closed down slightly for the day, they were even up at one point. Volumes were reasonable, too. Let’s hope this continues.

(An aside: the Bloomberg TV spectacle I witnessed is one more illustration, if anyone needed it, that the recent shakeup of the Bloomberg news organization is taking it further down the road toward infotainment and away from analysis.)

I came across a Factset article this morning discussing the performance of ETFs that specialize in small-cap Chinese stocks. These have been the center of speculative activity in China over the past year. But they have also been an area subject at times to protracted trading suspensions for some stocks and to days where some have been limit-up or limit-down with no trade. The short story is that thanks to fair value pricing the ETFs themselves have experienced no problems. More on this tomorrow.

After recently stabilizing and then rising by about 15%, Chinese stock markets gave up half their gains overnight, causing worry in global financial markets.

For what it’s worth, given that I don’t follow the mainland Chinese stock markets carefully, this is what I think is going on.

Three important factors:

–a government crackdown on real estate speculation has shunted tons of “hot” money into stocks

–Beijing didn’t pay much attention to direct and indirect margin trading ( indirect meaning commercial loans collateralized by stocks bought with loan proceeds, which avoid the letter of the law), thereby allowing speculators to leverage themselves very highly

–stock market rules set limits on the daily movement in individual stocks to + / – 10%. The way this works is that the exchange attempts to set an opening price at the start of the day. Let’s say yesterday’s close was 100. The exchange sees there are sellers at 100 but no buyers. So it waits a little while and then moves the proposed opening to 99.50. Again sellers but no buyers. So it moves the proposed opening to 99. Same thing. So the proposed opening price continues to ratchet down either until buyers emerge or the proposed price reaches 90. In the latter case, the price remains at 90 until either buyers appear or the trading day closes. The same process happens the following day. (Of course, there might be overwhelming upward pressure as well, in which case the price ratchets up without trade, or stocks might trade–as appears was the case overnight–for part of the day before reaching the daily limit price.)

snowballing downward pressure

A big problem with the daily limit system is that in times of stress often no selling gets done. For speculators who get margin calls, this means that each day the amount they owe their broker rises (as the market falls) and they can’t take any action to stop the bleeding. So a horrible sense of panic comes into the market.

The resulting downward spiral is what Beijing was trying to fix when it initiated extraordinary market stabilization measures a short while ago.

The first step in recovery is to stop the market decline.

The second–which is where we are now, I think–is to begin to unwind the enormous margin position that Beijing inadvertently allowed to develop. The only way to do this is to gradually withdraw the official props under the market, not enough to have the market freeze up again but enough to allow selling to happen. My guess is that this is what is starting to go on now. The keys to watch are volume figures and the total value of transactions–the higher, the better. Unfortunately, I can’t volume figures for today’s trade anywhere.

effects?

In my experience, most emerging stock markets have problems like this in their early days. Once the crisis is over, authorities usually pay better attention to margin debt. Invariably, they effectively dismantle the daily limit rule.

Typically, stock market problems have no overall negative effects on the economy.

In the short term, however, margin or redemption selling can create perverse market signals. Forced sellers liquidate what they can, not necessarily what they want to. This means, for example, that Hong Kong stocks can come under pressure. It also suggests that smaller, low-quality stocks may outperform blue chips–the former will be suspended while the latter go down.

This can be a real disaster for margin speculators, who may be left with an account that technically has equity in it but is filled with unsalable junk. On the other hand, the forced nature of a margin-related selloff can give new entrants a chance to buy high-quality stocks at distressed prices.

One seemingly odd sign that the worst is over will be a collapse in smaller stocks as larger ones are beginning to rise again. This means that buyer interest is returning to the smaller ones and they’ve resumed trading, which is a much better state than they’re in today.

Another, perhaps lagging, indicator that the worst is over would be Beijing ending the daily trading limit rule.

How long will the cleansing process take?

I don’t know enough detail to have an educated guess. A couple of months would be my initial estimate.

PRACTICAL STOCK INVESTING

Helping the Owl of Minerva catch an earlier flight

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Chinese stocks—and related ETFs

Chinese stock markets