New draft rules on stock-index futures set high minimum-access threshold that could deter some investors, the Wall Street Journal reported. Under the draft rules published Monday by the China Financial Futures Exchange, each investor would have to deposit funds equivalent to 8% of the value of a derivatives contract, based on a unified index grouping of 300 large-cap stocks on both the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges. Analysts said this would put the minimum threshold at about $4,350. Wu Ang, an analyst at Citic Securities, said the unexpectedly high deposit may signal the will of regulators to keep retail investors away and discourage speculation. Under the new rules a single investor can hold no more than 2,000 lots of single-month futures contracts at one time and the price cannot fluctuate by more than 10% in one day. China officially launched the exchange, its first financial-derivatives exchange, in September.
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