China share indexes rise for 6th straight day

China’s stock market saw two major benchmark indexes climb for a sixth straight session on Friday, helped by gains for property developers.

At the close on Friday, the Shanghai Composite Index was up 6.65 points, or 0.2 percent, at 3,392.36, a six-week high. For last week, the market capitalization of the Shanghai stock index rose by 2.59 percent to 29.65 trillion yuan ($4.56 trillion).

Meanwhile, the blue-chip CSI300 index was up 0.25 percent on Friday, gaining 2.7 percent for the whole week.

The smaller Shenzhen index ended unchanged for the day and the start-up board ChiNext index was higher by 0.38 percent.

The Chinese securities regulator approved three IPO applications on Friday, which will raise up to 2.2 billion yuan in the A-share market.

One company will be listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange and the other two on the ChiNext board of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, said the China Securities Regulatory Commission.

China has sought to normalize IPOs to improve financing efficiency and direct more money into the real economy since it suspended IPOs between July and November 2015.

New shares are subject to official approval under the current IPO system, which is moving to a more market-oriented system.

World stocks continued their strong start into 2018. MSCI’s gauge of stocks across the globe gained 0.66 percent on Friday, reaching a fresh record high on the day.

The powerful rally in global stocks and other markets is likely to persist until higher borrowing costs and a stronger dollar force investors to back off, Bank of America Merrill-Lynch’s analysts said on Friday.

The US investment bank’s weekly round-up of financial market flow tracking data showed $10.1 billion had exited US stocks in the biggest move in more than nine months.