Investors and Other Market Participants

Abstract

China’s equity market development to date has made the concept of investor somewhat of an oxymoron. The reality for the past decade is that market participants were ‘players’ and that the vast majority of players were individuals with the securities houses added in to stir the soup. In the years of the 1990s this picture has begun to change somewhat as the government has sought to build a base of so-called ‘institutional investors’ who, presumably by holding shares for the long term gains sound management might provide, would attribute greater stability to the markets. As a consequence, market participants have become somewhat more diverse. Yet the overwhelming fact is that retail investors account for 99.6 per cent of total A share account holders at the end of 1999.