Chinese shares fall on rising cautious sentiment

Chinese share closed lower on Monday amid big fluctuations, dragged by huge selling of market heavy weights.

The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index, which covers both A shares and B shares on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, fell 2.33% or 83.03 to 3,474.72 points after fluctuating between 3,530.91 and 3,460.26 points.

Similarly, the Shenzhen Component Index on the smaller Shenzhen Stock Exchange moved down 2.46% or 322.45 points to 12,782.50 points.

The combined turnover on the two bourses saw a noticeable decrease to RMB 157.6 billion from RMB 260.5 billion of the previous trading day.

Sinopec<600028><386> and China Life<601628><2628>, the two market blue chips, both reported an up to 60% decline in first-quarter net profit, which triggered a sell-off of their shares. Sinopec dropped 4.38% to RMB 11.34 and China Life retreated 4.12% to RMB 32.8. Investors remained cautious as another two major index components, Petrochina<601857><857> and Ping An Insurance<601318><2318>, are scheduled to publish their first-quarter earnings results on Monday night and Tuesday night respectively.

Spurred by the mounting rice prices, stocks in agricultural sector were the biggest winners with an average gain of more than 3%. Yuan Longping High-tech<000998>, Denghai Seeds<002041>, Fengle Seed<000713> and Dunhuang Seed<600354> all rose by the 10% daily limit to end at RMB 26.13, RMB 18.13, RMB 16.39 and RMB 19.27 respectively.

Elsewhere, Zijin Mining Group Co<601899><2899> which experienced huge speculations by institutional investors dropped by the daily cap of 10% to RMB 12.53, in a sharp contrast with a 96.21% surge on its trading debut.

As a whole, losers outweighed winners by 518 to 398 in Shanghai and 426 to 227 in Shenzhen.