International Investing

An interesting read about a market in a complete bubble frenzy:

Chinese have combined a traditional delight in word-play with their new-found passion for stocks to create a rich supply of colloquial jargon for investing that is bandied around brokerage offices.

“Ghost shares” are highly risky, but “black horses” have beaten expectations. Buying cheap to sell high later is known as “fighting for the hat”, while selling at a loss to avoid further losses is “meat slicing”. Investors who think a piece of news will boost prices claim to be “lifting the sedan chair”.

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Zhang Wei works most weekday mornings in several houses around the city, but for the last few weeks she has been visiting a brokerage in the Hongkou district of Shanghai in the afternoons. “Last month I made almost half my salary from investing,” she says.

With an eye on the new day-traders, a man placed an advert on the Taobao auction site last week selling signed doctors’ certificates for one month off work for Rmb100 ($13, EU9.70, £6.60). The advert has since been removed.