We’ve told Sid, sought average Joes from Bloggs to Sixpack, and followed the investing adventures of Mrs Watanabe around the world. Archetypal retail investors serve the same purpose for market observers as pollsters’ voter stereotypes for politicians. So meet Mrs Wong, China’s contribution to the genre and the force behind its stock-market gyrations.
This has been the year when the wild swings of Shanghai and Shenzhen became too significant for any investor, anywhere, to ignore. With the biggest index providers laying out their approaches to including mainland stocks in the coming years, international investors have to start paying attention to Mrs Wong now, whether they like her investing style or not.
Even after the summer turmoil when Shanghai and Shenzhen lost a combined 45 per cent of their capitalisation over three months, the two together still represent the second biggest market in the world, worth half as much again as Tokyo, the number three bourse. Mrs Wong and her friends are responsible for about 80 per cent of China’s daily trading, although holding roughly only a quarter in capitalisation terms. Just 2 per cent of the overall market is held by foreigners.