Hong Kong stocks down 0.82%

Commodity and financial firms led the decline as Hong Kong shares ended 0.82 percent lower on Thursday.

Hong Kong stocks went down 195.22 points, or 0.82 percent, to close at 23,614.89 on Thursday. The benchmark Hang Seng Index traded between 23,863.93 and 23,934.07. Turnover totaled 71.42 billion HK dollars, about 9.17 billion U.S. dollars, compared with Wednesday's 75.13 billion HK dollars.

The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index went down 96.43 points, or 0.74 percent, to close at 12,992.50.

Three of the four sub-indices lost ground. The Finance sub- index decreased 0.90 percent, the Commerce and Industry fell 0.92 percent, the Properties fell 0.56 percent, while the Utilities increased 0.27 percent.

HSBC Holdings fell 1.36 percent to 83.70 HK dollars. Hang Seng Bank went down 0.54 percent to 128.0 HK dollars. Bank of East Asia ended 0.43 percent lower to 34.50 HK dollars.

For Chinese financial firms, ICBC, the world's largest bank by market value, decreased 0.64 percent to 6.24 HK dollars. Bank of China ended 0.24 percent lower at 4.23 HK dollars.

Cathay Pacific decreased 2.08 percent to 112.90 HK dollars after Tuesday's big surge, concerning the rising oil prices.

Continuing the downward trend, offshore oil producer CNOOC fell 1.31 percent to 18.08 HK dollars, while China's biggest energy producer PetroChina decreased 0.36 percent lower to 10.94 HK dollars.

China Coal Energy was down 0.9 percent at 11.68 HK dollars, and China Shenhua Energy fell 0.7 percent to 34.20 HK dollars.

You can read the full story at Xinhua.net.