Optimism in Middle East, gold stocks lead share gain at China stock market on Friday: analyst

Chinese stocks closed higher on Friday, mainly led by optimism over the Middle East situation and strong performances of gold stocks, market analyst Timothy Pope said.

The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index increasing 1.12 percent to 4,031.51 points. The Shenzhen Component Index closed 0.75 percent higher at 14,963.41 points.

The combined turnover of stocks covered by the two indices reached 3.24 trillion yuan (about 476 billion U.S. dollars), up from 2.55 trillion yuan on the previous trading day.

In market trading, non-ferrous metals, commercial aerospace, and power grid equipment shares were among the top gainers, while industrial gas and glass substrates sectors led the declines.

The ChiNext Index, tracking China’s Nasdaq-style board of growth enterprises, gained 0.5 percent to close at 3,830.35 points.

Pope said the gains in the Chinese shares came partly from the positive global oil market provoked by US President Donald Trump’s remarks regarding the war with Iran.

“Chinese mainland stock markets actually saw their first weekly gain in a month, with the Shanghai Composite Index up marginally on last Friday’s close. Today the index was up 1.1 percent while the Shenzhen Component rose three quarters of one percent. There’s renewed optimism, I have just been hearing over a potential peace deal between the US and Iran after comments by Donald Trump. But it is important to point out that he’s made these sorts of statements before and it’s come to nothing, but this time it did provoke another strong reaction from equity and oil markets,” he said.

Pope said apart from the strong performance of sectors such as gold, the market gain linked with the recent move of U.S. tech giant Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX).

SpaceX has priced its initial public offering (IPO) at 135 U.S. dollars per share and raised 75 billion dollars through the sale of about 555.56 million shares, U.S. media reported Thursday.

“We also saw some flow on effects for gold stocks, gold prices were impacted and those were among the best performing and most popular stocks on the Chinese mainland. Today Zijin Mining Group adding 6.4 percent and the big financial institutions gaining as well. But we also saw investors hunting for proxies on the SpaceX IPO, which was true for the whole week. This is an interesting case because it’s been widely reported now that SpaceX made a decision to exclude Chinese mainland and Hong Kong investors from the offering. The roadshow and IPO websites were not accessible on the Chinese mainland or in Hong Kong, reportedly at SpaceX’s insistence. This is apparently the first time this has happened, and it’s extra significant because this is going to be the biggest IPO the world has ever seen. So today we saw a hunt for stocks that might give Chinese investors some secondhand exposure to SpaceX,” he said.

The United Kingdom’s economy contracted in April, with the gross domestic product (GDP) falling 0.1 percent month on month after growing 0.3 percent in March, according to data released Friday by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

The main driver of the negative growth was cited as a 0.2 percent contraction in services.

According to the ONS, one of the biggest contributors to the decline in services was a 9.1 percent fall in sports, amusement and recreation activities — the largest negative contribution from a single industry to services output and real GDP growth.

Some of the sector’s decline was attributed to the war in the Middle East, as the cancellation of various sporting events in the Middle East affected the output of U.K.-based companies, said the ONS.