BILL - Alibaba JD.com lead broad losses in Chinese Internet stocks

2023-03-15 11:26:09 ET

Chinese tech companies' shares largely slumped Wednesday, with the likes of Alibaba ( NYSE: BABA ), JD.com ( NASDAQ: JD ) and Tencent Holdings ( OTCPK:TCEHY ) going into the red amid a broad-market retreat fueled by more uncertainty coming from the banking sector.

The last issue involved Credit Suisse, which saw its shares fall to a record-low point after its largest shareholder said it wouldn't provide any more financial support to the Swiss banking giant . The Credit Suisse troubles came on the heels of the recent failures of Silicon Valley Bank ( SVB ) and Signature Bank ( SBNY ) in the U.S.

Chinese stocks had gotten a bit of a lift before U.S. stock markets opened as reports from China showed some improvement in the country's economy since the start of the year, and in the wake of Beijing easing up on COVID-19 restrictions on society and b 4%usiness. China's national statistics bureau said the country's industrial production rose 2.4% on a year-over-year basis during the first two months of the year, while retail sales rose 3.5% from the same period a year ago.

However, enthusiasm for Chinese stocks didn't last as trading proceeded.

Alibaba ( BABA ) shares fell almost 4%, while JD.com ( JD ) gave up 3.4% and Tencent ( OTCPK:TCEHY ) was down by 3.7%.

Losses also came from NetEase ( NTES ), which fell 3%; Baidu ( NASDAQ: BIDU ), off by 5%; Weibo ( WB ), down by 4% and BiliBili ( BILL ), which slumped by almost 5%.

The KraneShares CSI China Internet ETF ( KWEB ) also had a rough go of it, and was down by 3.6%.

Baidu ( BIDU ) shares, in particular, retreated as the Chinese Internet search giant was working to meet a deadline to deploy its "Ernie Bot" AI chatbot across all of its operations this week .

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