Professor Malkiel recently held an online question-and-answer session with users of FT.com, our parent website. The link to the full transcript is at the foot of the page, but here are some of the highlights.
â– On A-shares: "One anomaly that illustrates the inefficiency of the A-share market is that when some companies trade both in the Shanghai A-share market and in the Hong Kong in the H-share market or New York in the N-share market, the prices in Hong Kong and New York tend to be the same, but the prices of the same shares typically trade at premiums between 50 and 100 percent in the A-share market...The market is essentially restricted to Chinese nationals living on the mainland. Local Chinese institutions do take advantage of unsophisticated investors and that is why managed funds in China tend to outperform the market indices." [A-shares trade on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets].