Chinese stocks closed higher on Monday, with the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index up 0.66 percent to 3,583.31 points.
The Shenzhen Component Index closed 0.46 percent higher at 11,041.56 points.
Market analyst Timothy Pope highlighted the trends behind the numbers in his recap of Monday's stock market performance.
"The Shanghai Composite Index closed more than half of one percent higher. Not an astonishing gain, but it does keep the index within shooting distance of 3,600 points. Last week's losses were fairly steep, but it left openings for investors today to snap up banking and defense sector stocks. Those were among the best performers of the session, and semiconductor shares were doing okay too. Focus is now going to shift to the upcoming trade and consumer inflation data, which is due out later in the week. With the China-U.S. trade deal still proving elusive, the importance of the trade numbers is pretty obvious. And there's the CPI too, which managed to turn positive in June for the first time this year. So the July number is definitely going to get considerable attention," he said.
"Investors have also been watching the latest numbers coming in from China's automakers, and that's put some stocks into high gear today and others into reverse. BYD is the most notable for all sorts of reasons. Its shares were down a little less than one percent in Shenzhen today after the company flagged a drop in both sales and production last month. But on the other side, Great Wall Motor posted a big year-on-year jump in sales, and a modest month-on-month decline in sales for both EVs and traditional engine vehicles. But what is important to note that Great Wall and a few other Chinese EV makers are currently using only 40-something percent of their total capacity, while others, and BYD is in this category, actually sell more cars than they can make some months. So, at the risk of laboring the pun, it's a bit of a two-speed market," said Pope.
Analyst recaps Chinese stock market performance on Monday
