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"I already used my mobile phone to trade stocks before the company's decision to install firewalls," says the editor, adding that his colleagues are also using the same method.

What the web editor and his peers do can partly explains the recent spike in mobile phone stock trading services.

The number of subscribers to China Unioncom, a stock trading service run by the country's second-largest cell phone operator China Unicom, has increased more than 10 times in the past three months in Chongqing, according to its local branch.

About 1,000 new subscribers have been added to the lists of China Unioncom and China Mobile, the country's largest mobile phone operator, in Chongqing alone, according to local media reports.

A computer vendor in Dalian, a coastal city in Northeast China's Liaoning Province, says sales of notebook computers with related wireless gadgets skyrocketed along with stock indices.

"Most of the wireless equipment was bought by stock investors," she tells the local media.

"I sold more than 300 wireless cards in April alone, almost 30 times what I sold in the same time last year," the vendor says.

Although a majority of companies and government agencies are taking rigid rules against stock trading during working hours, some are taking other approaches.

Shanghai Lai Bang Domestic Services Company, a leading provider of housekeeping and other domestic services in the city, is one of them.

The company set asides half an hour both in the morning and afternoon as "stock trading sessions" for its staff, which means they are allowed to trade during these two periods without any penalty.

"Completely prohibiting them from stock trading is unrealistic," Li Rong, its general manager, says. "Even if they did not trade during work hours, they are distracted and will not concentrate on work."

"By allowing them specified trading times, they will work hard to make up for the lost time with improved efficiency and concentration," the manager says.

The services provider, Li says, is planning to introduce the practice to its branches.

"Our flexible way has proved that such relaxed mechanism works much better than a flat ban on stock trading," the manager says.