After six years of trading equities in China's volatile stock markets, Chen Yali regards the government's latest measure to cool its overheated bourses as wise but its method underhanded.
Retiree Chen, 56, supports the government's move to triple the trading stamp duty to 0.3 percent on May 30 as a necessary step to curb investors' unbridled enthusiasm for investing, which has sparked the lengthy boom here.
Comparing the market to one of China's most high profile athletes, Olympic and world champion hurdler Liu Xiang, Chen said: "You can't make Liu Xiang run all the time; you have to let him take a break from time to time."
Since the start of the year regulators had repeatedly warned that share prices had become dangerously inflated, and their decision to raise stamp duty, a trading tax, was aimed at slowing the speculative fervour.
The announcement immediately triggered several days' losses in Shanghai, culminating in a rout Monday of 8.26 percent of the bourse's key index for the biggest single-day loss in more than three months.
While Chen was better prepared than many investors for the downturn, having wound down most of her positions in late April, she criticised the handling of the government announcement.
"I started to lower my holdings at 3,800 points and gradually sold two-thirds of my stocks until the 4,000 points level," Chen said.
"What made us feel uncomfortable was the timing of the policy. It's not an embarrassing thing, why can't the government issue it in a normal way?"
The government announced the hike in the early hours of May 30, outraging many investors who, with little time to react to the policy change, took it on the chin as the market slid 6.5 percent that same day.
On May 29, the day before the notice, the key Shanghai index had closed at an all time high of 4,334.92. Over the next few trading days to June 4, the index slumped to 3,670.40.
In online postings the investing public said they felt duped after only a week earlier a tax official had said no such move was on the cards, and many accused regulators of backtracking, blaming them for their recent losses. Aiming to clarify the official line and appease angry investors, China's central bank vice governor Wu Xiaoling slammed the handling of the announcement.
"China's government has never gone back on its word. This is a violation of discipline of some bureaucrats and definitely does not represent the government," Wu was quoted as saying by the Oriental Morning Post.
But Zhao Xiao, a business management professor at Beijing's Science and Technology University, said that was no excuse.
"The underhanded sneak attack, under treacherous cover and at the cost of the government's credibility, had a horrifying effect (on investors) and that is why the market fell," Zhao said in a blog posting that was soon removed by the authorities.
Zhao, who is also a former director of research in the macro-economy department of the powerful state-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council, called the botched announcement "very stupid, extremely stupid."
By Friday the Shanghai index had clawed back some of its gains in very volatile trade but still lost 2.19 percent on the week to close at 3,913.14.
Analysts agreed that the trading stamp duty hike had been effective in slowing a headlong rise in share prices of 130 percent last year and further gains this year.
"The stamp duty was successful in slowing down the pace of growth in the market," said Wang Qing, the chief economist with Morgan Stanley in Hong Kong.
But other forces could counteract the tax hike, according to some experts.
Stephen Green, a senior economist at Standard Chartered, said: "The problem is that there is so much liquidity out there it would only take a couple of more weeks of Beijing doing nothing before you saw the market going up again."
"There are such huge fundamental pressures for it to increase," he added.
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