China Stock Rout Seen Getting Uglier as Derivative Trigger Looms

If Bank of America Corp. is right, Chinese stocks in Hong Kong are poised for a fresh wave of selling.
That’s because the benchmark Hang Seng China Enterprises Index is trading at a level that forces investment banks to pare back their bullish futures positions, according to William Chan, the head of Asia Pacific equity derivatives research at BofA’s Merrill Lynch unit in Hong Kong. The trades, tied to banks’ issuance of structured products, are likely to start unwinding when the index falls through 8,000, a level it breached on a closing basis Thursday for the first time since 2009.
Banks have purchased futures on the gauge of so-called H shares to hedge exposure to structured products that they’ve sold to clients, according to Chan. Many of those products have a ‘knock-in’ feature at the 8,000 level that will spur banks to cut futures positions to maintain the effectiveness of their hedges, he said. Additional pressure points may also come at lower levels, Chan said.

This post was published at David Stockmans Contra Corner on January 21, 2016.