By Tuesday's closing, the total market value of stocks at the two exchanges reached 17.776 trillion yuan. The Shanghai exchange had a total market value of 13.668 trillion yuan, with floating shares worth 3.91 trillion yuan. The average price to earnings ratio was 43.06. The Shenzhen bourse had a total market value of 4.108 trillion yuan, including floating shares worth 2.036 trillion yuan. The average price to earnings ratio was 53.37.

The "unstoppable" domestic stocks have stirred heated debates over whether it is over-heated and how big the bubble is there, among professionals, academics, government officials and ordinary citizens.

Regulators are vigilant and keeping close eyes on the daily movements. Concerning the wave of individual investors opening new accounts and bringing large sums of capital into the market, Shang Fulin, chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, believed the situation isn't that severe.

"The so called 'all Chinese are civil investors' phenomenon is an exaggeration," Shang said at a financial forum over the weekend. Of the more than 90 million individual stock accounts, 35 million are idle ones. That leaves only 60 million accounts with active trading records. As usually an investor opens two A-share accounts at the same time, one for trading at the Shanghai exchange and the other for Shenzhen, there could be as less as 30 million individual investors actively using their stock accounts for trading.

Shang reminded that under an excessive liquidity situation, investors should be noted about the impact of interest rate hikes to the stock market, because higher interest rates will affect the cost of fund-raising for enterprises and eventually their profitability.

Shang urged individual investors to enhance risk awareness and risk control ability, and "be responsible" to their own assets. Ordinary citizens, Shang said, should not rush in to the volatile stock market unless they have "spare money, spare time and placid attitudes".

The chairman also said China will continue to speed up the process for new share issuance and attract overseas-listed Chinese companies to return to domestic markets, in a bid to balance the capital demand-supply situation in the stock market.

This implies the regulator will stick to the market instruments to adjust the stock market, at least for now, analysts said.

1

2

(For more biz stories, please visit Industry Updates)