Amid a run-up in Chinese stock prices that has sparked warnings of a bubble, two new derivative products that offer investors tools to take bearish bets on the market debuted in Shanghai on Thursday.
Exactly five years after the launch of mainland China’s first equity futures contract, based on the large-cap CSI 300 index, new futures products based on the CSI 500 and Shanghai Stock Exchange 50 began trading on Shanghai’s China Financial Futures Exchange. The move follows February’s rollout of equity optionsbased on the SSE 50.
China has moved cautiously to expand financial derivatives in recent years, wary of the role that such instruments played in the 2008 global financial crisis. At the same time, regulators have pledged to promote financial innovation and offer investors new hedging tools.