Investors lose their shirts in meltdown
Wen Wu, a government employee of Loudi in Central China's Hunan province, has lost nearly all of his 240,000 yuan savings in the stock market. He now has just 7,000 yuan left in his account. A recent survey by the official Shanghai Securities News and Stock Star showed that over 60 percent of the 25,110 respondents had lost nearly 70 percent of the money they invested in the Chinese stock market. Only 6 percent of the respondents said they had made money in the past year. The survey also showed that more than half the respondents said they were "fully" invested in equities while 30 percent said they had kept on buying in the past several months in the false belief that the market had bottomed out. "We kept hearing from analysts and economists about an impending market rebound," said Fang Yu, a retiree in her mid-50s. So, she decided to top up when the leading indicator sank to 3,000 points. It has since dropped all the way to below 2,000. "I guess I was too naive," Fang said. "Individual investors, unlike professional institutional investors, prefer to purchase concept sectors and high-risky cyclical sectors, such as energy and metals, which coincidently have the largest drops this year," said Wu Feng, an analyst at TX Investment Consultant. Stocks of nonferrous metal, civil aviation, and insurance companies led the hefty fall this year, with nonferrous metal declining nearly 80 percent. More than 70 percent of the respondents of the Shanghai Securities' survey said they believed their purchasing power has been falling as much as the stock index. About 20 percent of the respondents said they have shelved their plans of buying new apartments, cars or refurbishing their homes. "People's investment enthusiasm in the stock market will be severally shattered going into 2009, given a series of panic selling this year, " Wu said. Questions: 1. The Hunan government employee who invested over 200 000 rmb into the stock market has how much money left now? 2. How many people were surveyed in the report by the Shanghai Securities News and Stock Star? Answers: 1. 7,000RMB. 2. 25,110 respondents. |