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Hong Kong stocks gained a marginal 0.38-percent and closed Tuesday's trading at 17,153.64, with the rise largely prompted by strong performances of the HSBC Holdings and the China Construction Bank.
Turnover was 78.09 billion HK dollars (10.09 U.S. billion dollars), down from Monday's 92.13 billion HK dollars (11.90 billion U.S. dollars).
The benchmark Hang Seng Index opened slightly lower but retrieved as many as 243 points and reached the day high of 17,239. 65 an hour after the start of the morning trading. The market then went down to the day low of 16,908.06 before going into the positive territory.
HSBC climbed 1.8 percent to 67.30 HK dollars after it said the bank's first-quarter pre-tax profit was "well ahead" of last year. It predicted a "tough" year ahead, but added that the bank was in good position to face various challenges.
China Construction Bank, the country's biggest commercial bank only after ICBC, rose 1.6 percent to 4.98 HK dollars after Bank of America sold a 5.8-percent stake in the lender. Construction Bank also ranked first on the day in both turnover and trading volume among all the Hong Kong-listed stocks.
Among the blue-chips, heavyweight China Mobile rose 1.4 percent to 76.35 HK dollars and the sole market operator Hong Kong Exchanges fell 5.9 percent to 109.9 HK dollars.
Ping An, China's second-largest insurer, added 1.5 percent to 50.70 HK dollars after saying its life-insurance unit had premium income of 50.2 billion yuan in the first four months of 2009. The company said yesterday property and casualty premiums were 11.95 billion yuan.
Local property stocks were heading to different directions. Cheung Kong rose 1.8 percent to 84.75 HK dollars, SHK Properties up 1.79 percent to 82.6 HK dollars and Hang Lung Properties down 3. 36 percent to 21.6 HK dollars.
China Merchants Holdings, the investor in ports that move about a third of the country's containers, fell 2.8 percent to 21.25 HK dollars after Chinese statistics officials announced 22.6 percent drop of export in April compared with the same period last year. |
