Bullish growth of the national benchmark Shanghai Composite Index has dwarfed the performance of China's 114 open-end stock funds, according to Galaxy Securities.

In the month ending October 12, the index rose 11.13 percent, while average growth rate of the funds was only 5.15 percent, the company said yesterday.

It has taken less than two months for the stock market to climb another 1,000 points after the index rose above 5,000 points for the first time in August.

Experts attributed the recent bull run to the decision of several blue-chips returning from the Hong Kong stock market to cash in on the robust mainland bourse, including China Shenhua, the nation's biggest coal producer and China Construction Bank, the nation's second-biggest commercial lender.

These IPOs also boosted the energy and financial sectors, as the share price of Sinopec, the country's biggest oil refiner, soared from 16.12 yuan (US$2.14) to 23.24 yuan and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, one of the top four commercial lenders, rose from 6.40 yuan to 7.65 yuan between September 12 and October 12.

"Personally I believe that financial stocks and new blue-chips have good yield prospects, and that's why I bought a large chunk of those stocks before their recent bullish trend," said Shi Yonghui, a mutual fund manager of Dacheng Blue-Chips Mutual Fund, whose growth rate last month passed 10 percent.

But not every fund manager made such timely decisions, resulting in their funds lagging behind the index's performance.

China's main stock index broke the 6,000-point mark for the first time on Monday and closed at 6,036.28 points yesterday after a record high on Tuesday.

(Xinhua News Agency October 18, 2007)