Twenty-four Chinese new stock mutual funds had collected about 62 billion yuan (US$9.09 billion) as of this week since the beginning of this year, according to latest statistics from Wind Info, a leading domestic financial data provider.

Although the Shanghai-based company did not specify a year-on-year figure, dealers said the subscription pace of individual investors for mutual fund investment was much faster than that of last year.

This had injected huge fluidity to Chinese stock market, which had picked up more than 40 percent from the beginning of this year as of Friday, Zhang Yunpeng, an analyst with Beijing-based Huarong Securities, told Xinhua Sunday.

The benchmark Shanghai Composite closed 0.5 percent lower, or 13.02 points, to 2,597.6 points Friday.

The index has gained 9.5 percent from the beginning of April to Friday with a total turnover of 5.17 trillion yuan, while the total turnover for the first quarter was only 6.22 trillion yuan, showing heartened investor confidence since April after the world's third largest economy presented more signs of life, analysts said.

This trend echoed the upbeat performance of the fund collection of the newly launched stock mutual funds, said Wind Info.

A new fund of Beijing-based Changsheng Fund Management Co., Ltd. to be launched on May 26 had collected a subscription of more than 14.6 billion yuan from individual investors as of Friday, much higher than earlier forecast, Wind Info data showed.

Zhang said although Chinese stock market had gained momentum in recent months, the correction would go on in the near future, as it was not easy for the Shanghai Composite Index to surpass the psychologically important 2,700 points line.

The index had been sliding from 2,727.58 points on Aug. 7 to an intra-day low of 1,664.93 points on Oct. 28. The index once climbed to an intra-day high of 2,688.1 points Tuesday to a 9-month new high boosted by coal and petrochemical large-caps, but it was not easy for the index to gain ground and surpass 2,700 points, he said.

With the ongoing market correction, 311 of the 372 open-end funds under monitoring by the Beijing-based China Galaxy Securities reported a net asset value drop this week, without specifying the average decline range.

The index sank 1.33 percent this week as investors cashed in on profits, dealers said.

(Xinhua News Agency May 24, 2009)