On Monday, China Securities Journal published the findings of a questionnaire survey on the year-end returns of small and medium-sized investors in China's stock market.

By December 22, many of them had experienced significant losses. About 79.34 percent of them were loss making, 15.33 percent broke even and only 5.33 percent made a profit.

More small and medium-sized investors were losing money when compared to July, when 70 percent of those surveyed made losses, 20 percent broke even and 10 percent made money.

Profit-making investors not only accounted for a small proportion -- the size and range of their profits were also quite limited. In contrast, the range of losses experienced by money-losing investors grew.

Among loss-makers, 34.75 percent experienced losses of over 50 percent of their investments, 32.2 percent of them 30-50 percent, 22.03 percent of them 10-30 percent and only 11.02 percent of them below 10 percent.

As for stock market trends in the coming year, 15.33 percent thought the market would go up in a fluctuating way, 30.67 percent that it would vary around a stable level and 20 percent that it would go down. The rest felt they were unable to make a good prediction, and most expressed a wait-and-see attitude.

Small and medium-sized investors also said they intend to be more prudent in making investments in 2005. Most of them favor risk-free or low-risk products.

Those who also invested in savings deposits, bonds, funds, gold, foreign exchanges and other products accounted for 47, 20, 14, 3.33, 1.67 and 13.67 percent respectively.

Most of them said that they would not invest for the time being in futures, which carry a comparatively high risk, and trust products, which they know little about.

The survey was jointly conducted by China Securities Journal and Shenzhen Huading Market Investigation Company. A total of 3,000 questionnaires were distributed in 20 major cities, with 2,753 valid questionnaires returned.

(China.org.cn by Yuan Fang, December 30, 2004)