China's Gen Z investors have transformed a 20% stock market decline into Halloween jokes, dressing as index charts and trading screens across major cities. In Hangzhou, a woman wore a candlestick chart costume with leeks, referencing internet slang for naïve retail investors repeatedly "harvested" in the market. In Shenzhen, costumes depicted big drops in the Shenzhen and STAR Composite Indexes, while another featured a falling chart branded with "Tonghuani," a play on the Tonghuashun trading app.
Social media posts expressed Monday market anxiety, with one Weibo user stating it was "10,000 times scarier than ghosts." The trend extends globally, with US investors also poking fun at falling tech shares amid earnings concerns. As of late October, China's equities market has lost $3.5 trillion from a May peak, with the CSI 300 Index entering a bear market for its steepest decline in over a decade. Chinese stocks rebounded slightly on Monday after reports regulators will meet with banks and securities firms to discuss market support measures, signaling renewed authorities' efforts to halt the slump.
Source: Bloomberg Markets · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing