Hong Kong shares fell onto a roller coaster Friday, whose benchmark Hang Seng Index once plunged 1,286 points following slumps in regional markets and concerns about the US subprime-mortgage crisis, and finally trimmed most of the losses on bargain hunting.

The Hang Seng Index moved down 285.26 points, or 1.38 percent, to close at 20,387.13, recovering from an afternoon nosedive of 1, 286 points, or 6.2 percent lower from Thursday's close to 19,386. 72. The benchmark index swung in 1,374.59-point range during Friday's session. The story was much the same elsewhere across Asia.

Turnover on the Hong Kong stock exchange totaled 115.88 billion HK dollars Friday, up from 104.94 billion HK dollars Thursday.

Although the Hang Seng has shed 1,620 points in the past three sessions, it is still up 2.1 percent since the beginning of the year.

Analysts said they expect the Hong Kong market to stay volatile in the near term as investors remain edgy on concerns U.S. subprime-mortgage problems will continue to wreak havoc on global capital markets.

Analysts said they expect institutional investors, particularly hedge funds, to continue trimming their Hong Kong shareholdings in coming days to raise cash to meet margin calls and anticipated redemptions by investors.

All the four major categories lost ground, with the Properties dropping most at 2.49 percent, followed by the Finance at 1.57 percent, the Commerce and Industry at 1.07 percent and the Utilities at 0.41 percent.

Only three companies in the 39-share benchmark index managed to eke out gains Friday,. China Mobile advanced 0.2 percent to 81.00 HK dollars after it hit an intraday low of 75.60 HK dollars and bargain hunters stepped in.

Investment bank Credit Suisse upgraded China Mobile to outperform from neutral and raised its target price on the firm to 100 HK dollars from 88.50 HK dollars, after China's biggest mobile operator reported Thursday a stronger-than-expected 25 percent rise in first-half earnings.

HSBC, Hong Kong's biggest lender by assets, fell 0.2 percent to 135.80 HK dollars.

Chinese insurance companies fell. Ping An, the second-largest insurer by premiums, after China Life, fell 1.8 percent to 58.15 HK dollars despite the company's first-half net profit more than doubling from a year earlier. China Life ended down 3.5 percent at 27.60 percent.

ICBC, CCB, Bank of China, CM Bank and CITIC Bank trimmed 1.09 percent to 5.29 percent.

HKEX, whose interim results met the higher end of forecasts, was down 3.45 percent in tightened loss after sharply falling 12 percent.

Mainland property stock China Overseas skidded 4.02 percent in spite of interim profit up 60 percent.

PetroChina and Sinopec Corp dropped 1.31 percent and 1.84 percent.

(Xinhua News Agency August 17, 2007)