The incessant climb of stock indexes is drawing new players to the market every day, pushing up new stock investment accounts to record highs.

 

Statistics from the China Securities Depository and Clearing Co Ltd shows 421,831 accounts were opened on Tuesday alone. Among them, 368,489 were A-share accounts. The number of total investment accounts reached 94.37 million that day.

 

As a result of this rush to open new accounts, some 6 percent of Chinese are now stock investors, the number growing by 30 percent since January 1, 2005.

 

But statistics don't tell the entire story. To understand just how much the stock market has caught people's imagination, one just needs to look around. Restaurants, shopping malls, bus stops, everywhere the topic of discussion is the same: stocks.

 

For Li Jianjun, 70, investing and studying to master the art of investing are the only occupations these days. Though dabbling in stocks since the early 1990s, Li made his biggest killing when one of his stocks zoomed from 22 yuan to over 70 yuan in just a few months last year.

 

"The market is such a thrill, you could lose or win a thousand yuans in a minute," Li said.

 

And, to swing in tandem with the market, the retiree has learned how to trade on the Internet, thus eliminating investment time lags.

 

In past months, numerous people like Li have joined the stock market party, drawn by the success stories of their friends and colleagues. The frenzy has ensured a steady cash inflow into the market, pushing the index even higher and drawing in even more hopefuls.

 

Currently, more than 80 percent of the trade in the Chinese market involves individual investors rather than the institutional variety.

 

Jacky Yeung, a 25-year-old Hong Kong journalist, has been looking to buy A shares since the bull run started last year. He has already scored big buying a type of A-shares-invested fund raised by a qualified foreign institutional investor.

 

"The fund's return is bigger than the ones investing in H shares," Yeung said. "I hope one day the ban on overseas investors to buy A shares will be lifted and I will be able to directly buy A shares. I could then pick up my favorite real estate share, China Vanke Co Ltd."

 

(China Daily May 10, 2007)