Mainland buyers still cool to H shares

Jiang Siqiang has a whole list of reasons why he is not interested in shifting any of his money from the Chinese mainland's equity markets to Hong Kong.

As the 67-year-old retiree sips tea and watches stock prices flicker across the screen at a brokerage in Shanghai, he ticks them off one by one. Shanghai shares tend to trade at cheaper valuations than those listed 1,224 kilometers away in the special administrative region. Hong Kong's market rules are unfamiliar, and he is also turned off by the poor track record of Chinese money managers who buy foreign shares through the Qualified Domestic Institutional Investor program.

"Even QDII funds are losing money overseas, and they are managed by experts," Jiang said at a Changjiang Securities Co outlet in Shanghai's Pudong district. "I wouldn't buy Hong Kong stocks" any time soon.