Business Channel 2007-10-13&10-15, 港股直通车（在线收听）

Scripts:

Hong Kong Securities broker Au Shing Tai is extremely busy these days. Au helps investors choose shares of all sorts of companies. But what are they buying?

They are buying shares in Hong Kong, with those company having business in China.

Buying China related shares here isn't new. For years foreign investors looking to ride on the coattails of China's economic growth buy Hong Kong listed shares of mainland companies like the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. But a recent decision by Chinese authorities to allow its citizens to buy Hong Kong stocks for the first time is fueling the Hang Seng indices' biggest boom ever.

Though it's truly unbelievable. We foot at a tremendous rally that has allowed the Hong Kong market to outperform most of the other Indices around the world.

Since August 20th when Chinese authorities first unveiled the plan to allow its people to trade Hong Kong stocks the Hang Seng has risen by roughly 35% surpassing twenty-eight thousand for the first time last week. Individual investors haven't even started trading yet but the talk is enough to feed speculation.

The Chinese new-joined investor is sitting on trillions of US dollars worth of savings. Some of them have been already put into their local stock market but the companies that are listed in Hong Kong, are not the same ones that are listed in China and they are much cheaper here's.

Much cheaper because people on the mainland could only buy shares there and not in Hong Kong. Banks and brokerages in China started taking advantage of the steep discount last year after authorities there decided to allow certain finacial institutions to invest outside the mainland. With the economy booming, China hopes easing the controls on investment will help ease upward pressure on Chinese markets, a run-up many are calling a bubble. Yet despite the growing ties between Hong Kong's and China's market, Au Shing Tai isn't too worried.

That money will push the market even higher and most probably over 30,000 and just keep on, keep moving up and up everyday. History dictates that no market continually goes up. But these are marksts that are shrugging off bad news and still setting the record...

Notes:

run-up: a often sudden increase