Huge inflows over the past two weeks to just four exchange traded funds tracking China’s blue-chip CSI 300 index have prompted speculation that Beijing’s “national team” is at work trying to support the economy.
Z-Ben, a Shanghai-based consultancy, noted that in just eight trading days the four ETFs had attracted $4.4bn in inflows, bringing their combined assets to more than $25bn and potentially suggesting involvement by the national team — a term coined in 2015 to describe large state-affiliated institutions that intervened to prop up the stock market.
The speculation that a new team might be beginning to act has been fuelled by the readout from China’s latest politburo meeting on July 24 when China’s leaders vowed to boost the economy and “expand consumption by increasing residents’ income”.