Jeremy Beckwith: So what a year it’s been for the Chinese stock market. A year ago the Shanghai Composite was at 2,000; on June 10 this year it was at 5,000 and now it’s fallen back to 3,500. A real rollercoaster ride.
It started because the Chinese – the People’s Bank of China – began to cut interest rates and ease monetary policy, which is the traditional sign for the start of a bull market across developed markets. And that gradually built up momentum. At the same time property prices in China started to fall, amid rampant speculation, so people began to switch their savings from property to the stock market. Initially in the larger-cap stocks, but over the last 6 or 7 months in particular we’ve seen huge rises in speculation in the smaller-cap stocks in China, many of which are not accessible to foreign investors.
This last few weeks the market has fallen very sharply, the large-cap stocks have fallen 30% in just a month, but the smaller-cap stocks have fallen even more sharply than that and caused real panic I think in the households of many Chinese. The Chinese government tried to intervene very aggressively to stop prices falling.
All this shows, I think, that China is still a very young stock market. The investors in China don’t really understand what they’re doing and why they invest in stocks. And therefore caution needs to be taken. However, the large-cap stocks I think have probably now fallen back to a level of valuation that’s now attractive again. We’ve seen the Fidelity China Special Situations fund manager come out and say he’s prepared to invest again at these levels. And therefore it probably is a time to put a toe back cautiously into the Chinese stock market, provided you are aware of the risks and provided you stick to the safer larger-cap stocks. The small-cap Chinese market is a real casino.