| Domestic stocks gain for 4th straight day |
SHANGHAI, June 8 -- DOMESTIC stocks rose for a fourth day after the country's leading securities newspaper said economic growth can support market gains. Ping An Insurance (Group) Co advanced.
"Investors may be itching to step up buying again given many of us remain bullish on the market in the long term,'' said Sun Cheng, who manages the equivalent of US$400 million with Pacific Asset Management Co in Shanghai, Bloomberg reported.
Shandong Haihua Co jumped by the 10 percent daily cap after announcing that its parent will own the majority stake in a venture with the Carlyle group.
The benchmark CSI 300 Index, which tracks yuan-denominated
A shares listed on China's two exchanges, gained 35.56, or 0.9
percent, to 3837.87 at the close.
The measure gained 0.9 percent this week. It slid 4.6 percent last week, the first weekly decline in 11, after the government tripled the tax on securities trades to cool the market.
China's economic growth can continue to sustain gains in the domestic stock market, Shanghai Securities News reported, citing State Council researcher Chen Daofu.
Rising corporate profits and excess liquidity, the main drivers behind China's stock gains over the past two years, are still in place, according to the Xinhua-affiliated newspaper.
Ping An Insurance, the nation's second-biggest insurer, rose 1.48 yuan (19 US cents), or 2.6 percent, to 59.18 yuan. China Yangtze Power Co, owner of the world's biggest hydropower project, gained 0.30 yuan, or 2.3 percent, to 13.34 yuan.
China's growth accelerated to 11.1 percent in the first quarter, the fastest pace among the world's major economies. First-quarter profit of domestically listed companies rose 82 percent, according to a report published by Goldman Sachs Group Inc on May 10.
Shandong Haihua, a Chinese company that produces soda ash and other chemicals, surged 1.43 yuan to 15.74 yuan. Parent Haihua Group will offer assets in the venture with Carlyle, while the Washington D.C.-based private equity firm will put up cash, Shandong Haihua said today in a statement. The statement didn't provide any financial or production details of the venture.
New investors opened 226,208 securities accounts for trading mainland shares and mutual funds on June 6, according to the latest figures released by the China Securities Depository & Clearing Corp. Account openings were 189,056 a day earlier, the smallest increase since April. Openings peaked at more than a million on April 30 and have averaged about 300,000 a day this quarter.
China Cosco Holdings Co, owner of Asia's biggest container-shipping line, said it plans to sell as many as 1.78 billion shares, or a 20 percent stake, in a Shanghai public offering.
The share sales of China Cosco may be the year's biggest outside the finance sector. Chinese companies have sold almost 132 billion yuan worth of shares in Shanghai and Shenzhen in 2007. Ping An Insurance raised 38.9 billion yuan in February in the largest domestic share sale this year.
The Shanghai Composite Index, which tracks the bigger of the mainland's stock exchanges, added 0.6 percent to 3,913.14. The Shenzhen Composite Index, which covers the smaller one, climbed 1.6 percent to 1,145.22.
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