HK market will benefit from the “January Effect”
HK market continued to benefit from the bottoming out of A-Share market.
HSI closed near the yearly high with a single month return of 2.84%. Though it
was much smaller than the 7.66% monthly return of HSCEI, the return of HSI
also reflected the improvement in China economic situation as
China-related stocks shared 50% the HSI market cap. After Shanghai
Composite Index hit the yearly low of 1,949 to trigger a rebound and broke the
resistance of 2,000, it also broke its 200-day MA indicating a strong technical
outlook of the China market. The strong momentum in China-related stocks
pushed up HSCEI and HSI and improved the market sentiment. It showed that
investors were optimistic about the market outlook. We estimate that HK market
will continue to surge in the short term on the portfolio rebalancing activities of
institutional investors in January. The overall performance for A-Share market
was relatively poor in 2012. However, after the Shanghai Composite Index
rebounded from the trough at 1,949 to break 2,200, market believes that China
stock market has already bottomed out and will continue to surge in 2013. So,
we expect that the capital inflows in the China stock market can lead to better
performance of the related stocks. Particularly, quite a lot of funds have already
flown into the China stock index ETF since early Dec last year. The inflow of
funds to ETF can bring positive impact on HK market. We believe that the
“January Effect” will help HSI to continue its rally. Particularly, the funds will flow
into the China insurance stocks and other finance stocks. That may drive the
turnover for the whole market to surge.
Since investors were optimistic about China stock market, China-related stocks
became the major movers of the HK market. Finance sub-index moved up by
4.23% and outperformed the HSI. Besides, C&I sub-index and property
sub-index gained 2.02% and 4.23%, respectively. However, utilities sub-index
was weak and became the only sub-index that entered the negative territory. It
dropped 0.84% for the whole month. As China property stocks kept rising on the
surge in China property market and HK property market continued to break
record, property sub-index gained the most for the whole year with an annual
return of 37.57%. Utilities sub-index underperformed the other sub-indexes
and gained 14.09% only. Besides, HSCEI surged 7.66% in Dec on a sharply
increase in China related stocks. It gained 15.09% on the yearly basis. The
Red-chips index gained 3.25% in Dec and 23.06% for the whole year. CITIC
Pacific (267 HK) surged 18.1% and became the best performing blue-chip. It
surged by 18.1%. However, COSCO Pacific (1199 HK) lost the most by 10.8% in
Dec. The best performer in HSCEI was China Air (753 HK) with monthly gain of
26.2%, while the worst performer in HSCEI was Weigao Group (1066 HK).
However, it only dropped by 3.7% in Dec.