Commentary
China’s regulators are putting its $21 trillion bond market at risk. The ham-fisted regime is not only centralizing financial power and reshuffling financial regulatory personnel but is also banning the best brokers and data aggregators from selling real-time price data.
Screens where China’s bond prices appeared went blank on Wednesday. Managers at the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC), who surprised markets with the ban, cited legal technicalities and data security.
Bloomberg claimed the lack of data and overregulation caused “market mayhem.”
Blind-sided traders scurried to the best alternatives, the two regular Chinese messaging apps WeChat and Tencent’s QQ. The traders attempted to get price quotes and close sales in chat groups, a method widely used a decade ago. However, in many cases, the time lag was too great and price data expired by the time sales were attempted….