China stocks end on fresh highs, helped by start-ups

Chinese stocks extended their climb on Wednesday, with the main indexes reaching new two-year peaks and one for start-up firms having its best day in five months.

At the close, the Shanghai Composite Index was up 0.37 percent at 3,559.47 points, while the blue-chip CSI300 index was up 0.17 percent.

The smaller Shenzhen index ended up 0.45 percent and the start-up board ChiNext index was higher by 2.57 percent.

The largest percentage gainers in the main Shanghai Composite Index were Shandong Lukang Pharmaceutical Co up 8.66 percent, followed by CITIC Securities Co gaining 8.11 percent and Shanghai Baosight Software Co up by 7.77 percent.

Mao Sheng, an analyst at Huaxi Securities, said the main line of the market is value-investment-oriented.

“The advantageous features of the value stocks are quite obvious,” Mao said, noting the broader market will still take the “fill in value depression” as the main direction in the short term.

Other stocks with relative stagflation may have short-term compensatory growth opportunities, Mao added.

So far this week, the market capitalization of the Shanghai stock index has risen by 1.87 percent to 31.21 trillion yuan ($4.88 trillion).

The price-to-earnings ratio of the Shanghai index was 16.14 as of the last full trading day while the dividend yield was 1.8 percent.

The Shanghai stock index has advanced 7.24 percent and the CSI300 is up 8.9 percent so far this year.