HK Stocks Nosedives 8.55% MondayHong Kong share prices tumbled 8.55 percent in panic selling Monday triggered by the plunge on Wall Street last week, dealers said."There is panic selling in the market," said Marco Mak, analyst at Tai Fook Securities, adding that "the market will remain on the downside depending on the performance of US markets later today." The key Hang Seng index lost 1,380.39 points to close below the 15,000-point for the first time since January 25 at 14,762.37, on turnover of 15.10 billion Hong Kong dollars (US$1.94 billion). The fall was the largest single-day drop since October 28, 1997, when the index closed down 1,438.31 points, dealers said. The hi-tech GEM index, set up in March at a base level of 1,000, was down 89.07 points at 609.03 on turnover of 421.25 million dollars. Hong Kong financial secretary Donald Tsang said there was no cause for worry over the fall in local stocks. "I do not think worry is the right attitude. I think we have to accept the decisions of the market," Tsang told reporters. "The market will react in a market way. We must accept also Hong Kong market forms part of the global market. It will be affected by things happening elsewhere," he said. But he added that Hong Kong had been matured by the experience of the Asian financial crisis. "The market will decide at the end of the day. We have the liquidity, we have the maturity and most of all, we have the efficiency to deal with the volume of traffic that our market will face in the coming days." Dealers said bargain-hunting in "old economy" stocks such as financials and properties tempered losses in other sectors such as telecoms. On Friday, the technology-heavy Nasdaq tumbled 355.51 points, or 9.67 percent, to close at 3,321.27, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 617.78 points, or 5.66 percent, to 10,305.77. Alex Tang, research director at Core Pacific-Yamaichi, said "investors are trimming down their exposure. We are not seeing any inflow of funds." "This is not a time for bargain hunting," he said but he added the market has been oversold since reaching an all-time high of 17,951.43 on March 8. Anand Althal, analyst at Goldman Sachs, said: "We detected no panic selling from institutional clients, and we remain constructive on both the US and Asian economies. "US clients were very focused on `flight to quality' as an investment theme -- we expect the same in Asia." Top losers among index stocks included China Telecom, down 9.25 dollars, or 15.22 percent, to close at 51.50, and Cable and Wireless HKT, down 2.25 dollars, or 11.7 percent, at 16.85. Hutchison Whampoa lost 13.50 dollars to 109.00 and Cheung Kong lost 10.50 to 88.50 dollars. Banking giant HSBC lost 1.50 dollars to close at 85.50, while Hang Seng Bank was down 1.00 at 69.00. Internet firm Pacific Century CyberWorks fell 2.30 dollars, or 14.33 percent, to close at 13.75 amid a global sell-off of technology stocks and renewed concerns that its deal to take over Cable and Wireless HKT may fall through, dealers said. |
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