After opening sharply lower, Chinese stocks bounced back in the first few minutes of trade Tuesday.
By the midday lunch break, the Shanghai Composite was up 0.4%, while the Shenzhen Composite was down just 0.5%.
The CSI 300 was trading up 0.8%.
This comes after global markets tumbled Monday as worries over China’s economy and instability in the Middle East combined to spook investors. The pain was most acute in China, where trading was halted prematurely after weak manufacturing data sent shares plummeting.
The trading halt was China’s first-ever use of circuit breakers — a kind of emergency brake — on main exchanges.
“I didn’t see that coming!” said Kit Juckes, a strategist at Societe Generale. “A dreadful start to the New Year for global market sentiment has seen circuit-breakers in action in the Chinese equity market and high-beta currencies falling across the board.”
– Charles Riley contributed to this report