Hong Kong stocks rallied 9.61 percent Friday, its biggest gain in eight months, following Wall Street's overnight rally and Chinese mainland's over 9 percent rebound Friday on news of latest market-boosting measures.
Hong Kong's benchmark Index close at the intraday high of 19,327.73, up 1695.27 points, or 9.61 percent, its biggest one-day gain in points and percentage terms since Jan. 23.
The index almost recouped all the losses in the former three sessions and trading in an extremely wide 3,044-point range this week. Hong Kong's stock market was closed Monday for a public holiday.
Turnover rose to 124.57 billion HK dollars (16.02 billion U.S. dollars), the highest in nearly five months, from Thursday's 102.23 billion HK dollars (13.15 billion U.S. dollars).
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rallied 410.03 points or 3.86 percent overnight to close at 11,019.69, boasted on news that worldwide leading central banks launching measures to ease liquidity in strained markets.
Leading central banks, including the U.S. Federal Reserve, the Bank of Japan, the European Central Bank and the Bank of England, took a coordinated effort to ease strains in the financial markets,making hundreds of billions of U.S. dollars available to improve liquidity in the money markets.
Chinese share prices also opened sharply higher Friday morning,up more than 8 percent on news that Chinese mainland government launches a series of major rescue market-boosting efforts. The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index closed up nearly 9.46 percent, the biggest one-day percentage gain in seven years.
With the authorization of the State Council, the Ministry of Finance and the State Administration of Taxation said on Thursday they decided to cancel the share trading stamp tax on stock purchase, effective on Friday, while the stamp tax on share selling remained unchanged at 0.1 percent.
The finance sub-index gained most at 10.84 percent among the four major sub-indices, followed by the commerce and industry at 10.78 and the properties at 6.39 percent. The utilities sub-index,the only loser, fell 1.34 percent bucking the trend.
Central Huijin Investment said it began buying ICBC, China Construction Bank and Bank of China Thursday, sending the three banks' share prices steeply up in Hong Kong market which led Friday's blue-chip gains.
China Construction Bank, the third largest bank in China, was up 15.7 percent to 5.44 HK dollars. China's largest lender ICBC up16.2 percent to 4.67 HK dollars. Bank of China, the country's second largest bank, up 16.7 percent to 3.36 HK dollars.
China Life, the country's largest insurance company, was up 9.8percent to 28 HK dollars. Ping An, China's second largest insurance company, up 16.89 percent to 51.9 HK dollars.
Stock exchange operator Hong Kong Exchanges was up 16 percent to 101.80 HK dollars on the high turnover.
Blue-chip heavyweight HSBC, which accounts for the largest weighting of the Hang Seng Index, terminating the acquisition of shareholding in Korea Exchange Bank, was up 7.49 percent to 123.50HK dollars.
China Mobile, the largest mobile phone operator in the country and the market's largest stock measured by capitalization, was sharply up 14.75 percent to 84 HK dollars. China Unicom up 9.57 percent to 12.14 HK dollars. Netcom was up 12.66 percent to 18.16 HK dollars. China Telecom was up 20.53 percent to 3.64 HK dollars.
(Xinhua News Agency September 20, 2008)
