There are concerns that new competitors like China Netcom and China Telecom will enter the domestic market once 3G services are introduced next year. The focus now is on such uncertainties.
U.S. markets are starting to worry about the earnings of multinational companies in the face of the strong dollar.
Sentiment is not too positive and people are quite cautious ahead of the Federal Open Market Committee meeting on Tuesday.
Net interest margins in Hong Kong remain under pressure and Standard Chartered Bank's performance here in 2005 would likely not be as strong as in China and elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific where it has expanded aggressively.
But the HSI needs to break 14,800 to confirm we're heading higher.
Gains on Wall Street overnight and in Tokyo this morning helped the market recover.
With mortgage rates falling as banks compete aggressively for business, homebuyers are being encouraged to buy apartments.
H shares held well yesterday even if there was panic selling in Tokyo and other Asian markets yesterday.
I think the market could test 15,900 today but profit-taking will set in at that level.
Regional markets are higher in the afternoon which helped the Hong Kong market up.
PCCW still has more upside potential but I think we will see some resistance when it reaches HK$15.5,
Turnover remained healthy because some institutional investors chased after select laggard industrial and retail stocks.
Trading was confined within a narrow range in the absence of fresh stimulus. Overseas markets lack momentum and and there isn't any fresh news that could drive up activity.
The decline today was a disappointing end to the year. The weak performance was attributable to weak Asian stocks as well as profit-taking after recent gains.
The real pressure in Hong Kong should be on semiconductor stocks like ASM Pacific and QPL, ... As we don't have semiconductor blue chips, pressure on the index shouldn't be too great.
Financials are the natural choice for bargain hunters because retail sales in the U.S. were weak so investors feel the upside for interest rates may be less than expected.
There is some speculation that CLP might announce a generous payout. But the company continues to face an overhang because of the uncertain outcome of its talks with the government on the scheme of controls relating to the operations of power companies in Hong Kong.
We should have narrow range trading today with a downside bias on profit-taking.
Rumors about a merger of China's A and B markets, coupled with generally bullish expectations of further gains of China stocks, are driving buying interest in this sector.
Profit-taking after yesterday's gains account for the softness in the market today.
There isn't much momentum in the banking sector; the sector simply moved along the general uptrend of the market today.
There probably isn't too much downside from here. The performance of other Asian markets is quite encouraging so I think the index may hold above 16,000 and maybe rise to 16,250 later in the day.
Hong Kong has been outperforming other markets, but buying has mainly been of banking and property stocks and they could not hold at this level because global equities are going down.
The market seems to have found support at 15,300 this morning. I think the fact that Nasdaq recovered on bargain hunting in some tech stocks in late trade on Wednesday has stopped stocks falling so sharply here.
The market is following Wall Street and Nasdaq lower at the moment but I think we're going to see bargain hunting coming in later,
The market is drawing support from several factors, including follow-through buying of HSBC.
The market is down on Wall Street's performance but it may rebound from here because Hutchison and Cheung Kong don't seem to have too much downside and China Mobile's share price in the U.S. didn't fall too sharply overnight.