Chinese shares edged up 1.09 percent on Tuesday, as liquidity concerns were eased by regulators' overnight call for more cautious refinancing moves.
The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index closed at 4,238.18, a gain of 45.65 points. The Shenzhen Component Index, however, lost 158.25 points, or 1.02 percent, to end at 15,328.42.
The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) issued a statement on Monday evening in which it urged listed firms to "carefully" consider investor demand when seeking to refinance through share offerings.
Analysts said that the move, combined with companies' denial of refinancing rumors, mitigated investors' fears but wouldn't fully resolve the liquidity strain.
PetroChina, which accounts for around 25 percent of the Shanghai index, gained 2.24 percent to 22.40 yuan (about 3.13 U.S. dollars), and Sinopec, the largest oil refiner, rose 3.52 percent to 16.76 yuan.
China Life surged 4.97 percent to 37.20 yuan. Ping An Insurance climbed 4.07 percent to 68.04 yuan.
There remained a gap of perhaps hundreds of billions of yuan between the demand and supply of funds in the market, Zhang Lei, an analyst with Qilu Securities, said. Zhang said that more policies to cut new offerings, rein in large-scale refinancing and approve more fund releases were necessary.
Locked-up shares that are due to become tradable again this year will need to absorb 1.57 trillion yuan in total, while newly-released or split funds could raise at most 129 billion yuan, said Zhang.
The CSRC has tried to improve liquidity by accelerating the release of new stock funds and experimenting with fund companies on new channels of stock investment. Six stock funds have been approved for release this month, which was viewed as a clear policy signal to shore up the stock market.
Shares in Shanghai tumbled 4.07 percent on Monday amid market talk of refinancing by China Unicom, the country's second-largest mobile operator, which denied the rumor after its shares plunged by the daily trading limit of 10 percent on Monday. However, China Unicom, which had been rumored to be planning a 60 billion-yuan refinancing plan, saw its shares continue to slump on Tuesday, losing 4.21 percent to close at 10.46 yuan.
Following the CSRC's call, a spokesman for Ping An Insurance said on Monday that the company would cautiously consider the timing and size of its share offering plan, taking demand into account.
As of Monday, Ping An's shares had dropped 33.4 percent since Jan. 21, when it announced the issue of an additional 1.2 billion A shares and up to 41.2 billion yuan worth of convertible bonds.
China Life also denied a refinancing plan to raise 200 billion yuan on Monday.
Gainers led losers by 465 to 316 in Shanghai on Tuesday and by 377 to 227 in Shenzhen.
Combined turnover decreased to 135.51 billion yuan from 136.26 billion yuan on Monday.
Source: Xinhua
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