Individual investors from China have scurried back to the stock market to buy riskier assets, fearing they might get left out of a rally that some money managers say is akin to a raging bull run a decade ago.
While there is no official data on retail buying, some anecdotal evidence shows that the nation’s pool of more than 200 million investors – the largest cohort of its kind globally and a bit smaller than the population of Brazil – were chasing returns from a run that drove China’s benchmark up by more than 20 per cent in the final week of September.
Joy Yang, a 47-year-old executive at a pharmaceutical company in Shanghai, bought stocks before the weeklong holiday that started on Tuesday. In her first foray into equity investment since a US$5 trillion market meltdown in 2015, she bought property developers and exchange-traded funds after seeking tips from friends.
“Everyone is buying stocks now and that’s becoming a…
