More than one million accounts trading China's A shares had shut down by the end of November amid the bearish stock market this year, according to news reports on Tuesday.
Shanghai Securities News said in a report that 1.26 million A share accounts have closed in 2012, and as of Dec. 4, with the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index dipping more than one-fifth this year.
According to figures released by China Securities Investor Protection Funds, with investors leaving, capital remaining in trading accounts had decreased by 250 billion yuan (39.7 billion U.S. dollars) as of Nov. 23.
Investors who chose to stay also had a hard time this year.
According to data from the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), about 53 percent of individual stock holders saw losses as of the end of September.
The sluggish performance and meager returns from the market left new investors hesitant to put their money in.
The newspaper reported that new accounts opened in A shares in the past six weeks were under 100,000 per week, only one-seventh of the peak seen in 2009.
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