Mainland Chinese investors snap up a record amount of Hong Kong stocks to play AI

cnbc.com:

BEIJING — Mainland Chinese investors are piling into the Hong Kong stock market at record volumes as its tech-heavy Hang Seng Index trades around three-year highs.

Net mainland Chinese purchases of Hong Kong stocks hit a record 29.62 billion Hong Kong dollars ($3.81 billion) on Monday, according to the Wind Information database.

That was the most since the Hong Kong stock market launched its «connect» program with the mainland, allowing local investors easier access to a select number of stocks traded offshore. The Shanghai Connect launched in November 2014, while the Shenzhen Connect opened in December 2016.

The Hang Seng Index traded around 0.7% lower Tuesday morning following a sharp sell-off in U.S. stocks overnight on worries about the impact of tariffs on global growth.

Net buys via the Shanghai Connect reached nearly 18 billion HKD on Monday, while those from the Shenzhen Connect reached 11.63 billion HKD, the data showed.

Hong Kong-traded shares of Alibaba and Tencent, both of which are not traded in mainland China, saw the largest net purchases, according to Wind data.

China last week affirmed its pro-growth stance by emphasizing plans to support private sector tech innovation, and increasing its fiscal deficit to a rare 4% of gross domestic product — including an expanded consumer subsidies program.

Citi's global macro strategy team on Monday upgraded its view on Chinese stocks — namely the Hang Seng China Enterprises Index — to overweight, while downgrading the U.S. to neutral.

«One key reason why we have not been focused on Chinese equities is tariff risk,» the analysts said.

«Abstracting from this issue, we believe the case for China tech was clear. A) DeepSeek proved that China tech is at the Western