HONG KONG: Hong Kong shares fell on Friday as investors weighed the outcome of the Sino-US trade talks, released during the final minutes of trading.
The Hang Seng index fell 1.3 percent, to 29,926.50, while the China Enterprises Index lost 1.1 percent, to 11,890.62 points.
China and the United States have reached a consensus on some areas of their trade dispute but still have relatively big disagreements on others, China's official Xinhua news agency said in a microblog post on Friday.
"An inconclusive outcome means there is a deadlock," said Iris Pang, Greater China economist at ING, Hong Kong. "This is negative for the markets. It's not tit-for-tat on just trade anymore, it's more than trade, it's about investments as well. If it involves the ZTE case, it means it's on the larger topic of 'Made in China 2025'.
The sub-index of the Hang Seng tracking energy shares dipped 0.7 percent while the IT sector dipped 0.65 percent, the financial sector was 1.8 percent lower and property sector dipped 0.7 percent.
The top gainer on Hang Seng was Wharf Real Estate Investment Company Ltd up 2.83 percent, while the biggest loser was HSBC Holdings PLC which fell 3.54 percent.
China's main Shanghai Composite index closed down 0.32 percent at 3,091.03 points while its blue-chip CSI300 index ended down 0.49 percent.
The yuan was quoted at 6.3585 per US dollar at 08:33 GMT, 0.13 percent weaker than the previous close of 6.35.
As of the previous trading session, the Hang Seng index was up 1.32 percent this year, while China's H-share index was up 2.6 percent. As of the previous close, the Hang Seng has declined 1.61 percent this month.
The top gainers among H-shares were CSPC Pharmaceutical Group Ltd up 1.91 percent, followed by Hengan International Group Company Ltd gaining 1.26 percent and China Gas Holdings Ltd up by 0.9 percent.
The three biggest H-shares percentage decliners were Air China Ltd which was down 3.80 percent, Byd Co Ltd which fell 3.4 percent and Huatai Securities Co Ltd down by 2.1 percent.
About 1.81 billion Hang Seng index shares were traded, roughly 104.3 percent of the market's 30-day moving average of 1.74 billion shares a day. The volume traded in the previous trading session was 1.79 billion.
At close, China's A-shares were trading at a premium of 23.00 percent over the Hong Kong-listed H-shares.
The price-to-earnings ratio of the Hang Seng index was 12.24 as of the last full trading day while the dividend yield was 3.2 percent.
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