Tech shares account for about 43 percent of Hong Kong’s average daily trading turnover, up from roughly 20 to 25 percent in recent years, with artificial intelligence emerging as the dominant investment theme, said Bonnie Chan Yi-ting, chief executive of Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (0388).
The upward trend reflects a shift in investors' risk appetite, which has also driven robust demand in tech-related initial public offerings in the city, Chan said on Monday.
However, she emphasized that HKEX does not want the market to focus solely on tech and AI companies.
Going forward, the exchange will continue to welcome tech firms while making sure other sectors and lower-cap companies are not neglected, keeping the market inclusive, she added.
She cited recent meetings with US investors and listing candidates which revealed that the American market has become overly concentrated on AI, with higher market-cap thresholds, adding that firms are unlikely to draw investor interest unless they are big-scale AI computing operators or are valued at around US$5 billion (HK$39 billion) or above.
Regarding tokenized assets, Chan said there are many challenges to promoting the trading of such assets on HKEX. Tokenized stocks resemble depositary receipts - particularly unsponsored ones - where a third party consolidates multiple assets of another issuer and processes them via blockchain, which can lead to price misalignment and two separate liquidity pools, she said.
She pointed out that HKEX will focus on real-world assets and leverage blockchain technology to develop a tokenized platform, which will offer tokenized RWAs issued by the exchange or the third party.
Besides, Chan noted that it's worthy to explore the carbon credit product further, as it has entered a mature phase.
