Oct. 16th Financial Association news (Editor Ye Feng): Hong Kong stocks traded horizontally and shook all day, with all three major indexes closing down collectively. As of the close, the Hang Seng Index fell by 0.16%, the Hang Seng China Enterprises Index fell by 0.14%, and the Hang Seng Tech Index fell by 1.09%.

Let's look at today's market highlights: The Hang Seng Index continues its short-term downward momentum, testing the support of the 20,000-point mark; Policy expectations are repeatedly speculated, with real estate and major financial sectors active; John Lee Ka-chiu delivered the annual policy address, and HK based companies responded positively.

[Hang Seng Index Continues Short-Term Downward Momentum Testing Support at 20,000 Points]

On the market, core technology stocks saw mixed movements today, with some individual stocks turning from gains to losses in the afternoon. JD.com fell over 3% at the close, Kuaishou fell over 2%, while Xiaomi, Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent all declined.

In other hot spots, real estate stocks rebounded and led to a rise in building materials and related industries. Furthermore, sectors including steel, gold, non-ferrous metals collectively rose, while banks and brokerages also showed some recovery.

Among the declining sectors, semiconductor stocks experienced a pullback, while dining, tourism, pharmaceuticals, and autos and other consumer industries trended lower.

Overall, the Hang Seng Index continues its short-term downward momentum. Despite a slight easing compared to the drastic adjustment last week, it is now testing the 20,000-point mark downwards.

Today, the turnover of the Hang Seng Index further contracted to 208.369 billion Hong Kong dollars, declining for five consecutive trading days. The total short-selling amount is 19.356 billion Hong Kong dollars, with short-selling funds accounting for 9.29%, close to the average of the past five days.

Meituan-W, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, and Alibaba-W ranked in the top three in terms of short-selling amounts, with 1.449 billion Hong Kong dollars, 0.713 billion Hong Kong dollars, and 0.692 billion Hong Kong dollars respectively.

Policy expectations are in a repeated game with active real estate and major financial sectors.

On the market front, the short-term market continues to revolve around policy games. Today, the real estate and infrastructure stocks are leading in terms of rise, which are also related to the market's policy expectations.

On the news front, on Thursday (October 17th), leaders from the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, Ministry of Natural Resources, the central bank, and the financial regulatory commission will introduce the situation related to promoting the stable and healthy development of the real estate market at the press conference.

In addition, insurance and brokerage, as representatives benefiting from the rising market, also experienced some rebound.

Unlike real estate stocks, benefiting from the rising market driving asset prices and market trading volume higher, the benefits for insurance and brokerage may directly reflect on the performance level.

This week, China Life Insurance, China Pacific Insurance, and China Life Insurance successively disclosed their performance forecasts for the first three quarters, all showing a significant year-on-year increase in net income.

However, on the other hand, the performance of the consumer sector has been consistently weak since National Day, which may also be related to the lack of policy catalysts. It can be seen that policy expectations still play a key role in influencing short-term market trends.

John Lee Ka-chiu delivered the annual policy address, with positive feedback from Hong Kong based companies.

Today, John Lee Ka-chiu, Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, delivered the 2024 Policy Address mentioning multiple industries, with positive feedback from the HK based companies sector.

Specifically, John Lee Ka-chiu mentioned plans to relax some mortgage regulations for housing; further enhance the research and development transformation of biomedical technology; continue to promote innovative financial services such as virtual asset trading; allocate 0.75 billion Hong Kong dollars to support the development of electric vehicles; establish a 10 billion Hong Kong dollars fund to guide the development of the innovation and technology industry.

For the Hong Kong stock market, John Lee Ka-chiu also mentioned further optimizing the securities market. This includes developing new overseas funds, listing ETFs tracking the Hong Kong stock index in the Middle East to attract local funds; attracting international companies to list in Hong Kong, while promoting large mainland enterprises to list in Hong Kong; the Securities and Futures Commission and the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Ltd. will enhance market efficiency and reduce trading costs.