China's stock market just...can't.
The country's stocks are falling so fast that they're panicking investors and tripping automatic levers called "circuit breakers" that shut down the entire market when it's crashing. Two days ago, after the circuit breakers shut down trading, China closed its stock market early due to a steep decline. It's a bad sign, but not entirely unprecedented; that's happened in the United States too.
What happened on Thursday, however, might be a first. In all, the market stayed open for only 15 minutes.
China's stock market ceased trading after only a few minutes after the market lost 5% in value so quickly that trading was automatically halted. It's the second time in just a few days of 2016 trading that its new "circuit breaker" was tripped due to sharp declines. The pause is meant to give the market time to settle and hopefully avoid any panicked selling that would lead to a deeper crash that would cause more financial damage.
[seealso slug=http://sale-online.click/2016/01/04/china-2016-stock-market/%5D%3C/p%3E%3Cp%3EIt didn't work.
The market reopened after a 15-minute break -- only to see the selling resume and stocks keep falling. The CSI300, considered the Chinese benchmark index, fell 7% for the day. At that point, the market ends the day.
Chinese asset managers overnight pic.twitter.com/HqmRnmhGUJ— Ryan Gorman ಠ_ಠ (@GormoExJourno) January 7, 2016
The decline was about a steep as it gets.
Comparing the Now Two Days in 2016 Chinese Equity Trading Was Halted: pic.twitter.com/h9EKDmkQor— Michael McDonough (@M_McDonough) January 7, 2016
The situation has predictably rattled other markets in Asia and around the world, with almost every major index down more than 2%. U.S. markets aren't quite open yet, but futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average are down more than 300 points.