According to Reuters, a quant hedge fund trader in southern China said that "our line was unplugged". Adding that orders to sell stocks on the fund's broking platform were rejected. In a similar case, a Shanghai-based quant fund manager said that they could not go through with sell orders today as the broker's trading system would "decline orders".
Adding to the story is a hedge fund manager in northern China claiming that his firm could tweak positions but wasn't able to reduce holdings by much, due to "guidance" by regulators. It isn't clear how widespread this directive by Chinese authorities is and how many hedge funds are directly impacted as a result.
If we're already reaching this point, it goes without saying how desperate the times are at the moment. I mean, to start targeting private funds? Sheesh.
There is no doubt that the exodus out of Chinese equities is looking really, really ugly. But this isn't going to inspire much confidence, especially if local authorities are not taking the right steps to actually get to the root of the problem in China.
