China stocks inch up, stimulus effectiveness in focus

Reuters

China stocks inch up, stimulus effectiveness in focus

Oct 22, 2024 at 5:10 am GMT

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Updates to midday

By Summer Zhen

HONG KONG, Oct 22 (Reuters) -China and Hong Kong stocks moved higher onTuesday as investors digested Beijing's latest stimulus measures, including fresh ratecuts the previous day.

Also boosting the market sentiment, the country's central bank kicked off its first operations on Monday under a swap facility designed to revive the stock market, exchanging assets worth 50 billion yuan ($7 billion) with brokerages, fund companies and insurers.

By midday, both theblue-chip CSI300 Index .CSI300 and theShanghai Composite Index .SSEC went up 0.5%.

Hong Kong benchmark Hang Seng .HSI rose 0.5%, whileChinese H-shares listed in Hong Kong, the Hang Seng China Enterprises Index .HSCE climbed 0.7%.

Stocks have wobbled in recent sessions after a roller coaster ride in the past few weeks following a raft of policy announcements out of Beijing.

Investors have turned cautious on whether the policy support will be sufficient to revive growth.

Still, the ongoing implementation of easing measures and the better-than-expected third quarter economic growth data put some floor under the stock market, market participants say.

"For now, we give policymakers the benefit of the doubt that China's business cycle will improve following the latest growth push and remain overweight on Chinese stocks," said Yan Wang, China Strategist of Alpine Macro.

Markets will soon look for evidence of whether the easing measures will bear fruit, he added.

By sector,media and auto stocks were outperformers, up 4.4% and 2.6%, respectively.

Additionally, Chinese corporates are converting more of their foreign exchange holdings into yuan and overseas investors have increased purchases of local stocks since September, the country's foreign exchange regulator said on Tuesday.

Around the region, MSCI's Asia ex-Japan stock index .MIAPJ0000PUS was weaker by 0.52% while Japan's Nikkei index .N225 was down 1.30%.

The yuan CNY=CFXS was quoted at 7.1244 per U.S. dollar, 0.05% weaker than the previous close of 7.121.

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Reporting by Summer Zhen; Editing by Sonali Paul and Christian Schmollinger

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