Chinese stocks closed lower on Friday, with the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index down 0.12 percent to 3,635.13 points.
The Shenzhen Component Index closed 0.26 percent lower at 11,128.67 points, while the ChiNext Index, China's Nasdaq-style growth board, lost 0.38 percent to end at 2,333.96 points.
Market analyst Timothy Pope highlighted these trends in his recap of Friday's stock market performance.
"The Shanghai Composite Index today ended slightly lower, but it did touch its highest level since October last year at 3,645 points, an intra-day high. It didn't manage to hang on to that level though. It did slip back to close the day slightly lower about 0.1 percent down. But for the week the index is up more than 2 percent. This week we had some pretty upbeat looking trade and services data. Exports beat forecasts in July, indicating that Chinese exporters were making the most of the trade truce with the U.S. And a private survey of the services sector from Standard and Poor's Global showed a stronger expansion there. The current tariff deadline for China is August 12, but I think the White House is using a slightly different definition of the term deadline than we use in journalism, so who knows what that is going to mean and what we are going to see next week," he said.
"Today though we saw investors swap their tech stocks and banking stocks in, in favor of metals producers and oil refiners. On the tech side, one of the biggest decliners was the chip producer SMIC. It was down 4.4 percent. It issued its third quarter profit guidance today. That was a little weaker than expected. Although what we did hear from the CEO saying that Trump's tariffs haven't had as big an impact as expected and the company hasn't had to deal with a what he called a 'hard landing'," he said.
Analyst recaps Chinese stock market's Friday performance
