Mainland stock exchanges suspend circuit breaker after disastrous first week

The Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges announced late Thursday night that they were suspending a stock market circuit-breaker mechanism that halted equities trading early twice this week since being introduced on the year’s first trading day, Reuters reported, citing statements to the exchanges’ websites. “The circuit breaker mechanism was not the main reason for the market slump. It just didn’t work as anticipated based on actual situations,” Deng Ge, a spokesman for the China Securities Regulatory Commission said in a statement. “The negative effect of the mechanism outweighed its positive effect.”