New York (HedgeCo.net) – The year has started as badly as possible for most world stock markets, but China’s market has seen the worst of it as the Shanghai Composite Index is down 11.7% in the first week and two of the four days have tripped the circuit breakers and resulted in halted trading sessions.

Thursday’s trading was so chaotic that the market was only open for 29 minutes before the circuit breaker was hit and the market was closed for the rest of the day. This action led to a worldwide selloff on Thursday.

One Shanghai based hedge fund was so concerned about the selling this week that they dumped all of their holdings. Bloomberg reported that Shanghai Heqi Tongyi Asset Management liquidate their entire portfolio and quoted Chief Investment Officer Chen Gang. “This is insane, we were forced to liquidate all our holdings this morning,” Chen stated. Shanghai Heqi Tongyi manages approximately $46 million.

Rick Pendergraft
Research Analyst
HedgeCoVest