About Zhitong Finance

Zhitong Finance

Overview

Zhitong Finance, known in Chinese as Zhitong Caijing, is a financial information service based in Shenzhen, in Guangdong province, that focuses on the global capital market. Company databases describe it as a financial services platform providing financial information including stock market data, investment advice and economic news, with its services available to investors and individuals interested in the financial and capital markets. In practice, that makes Zhitong Finance a news agency for the markets rather than for general news: it produces the fast, data-heavy reporting that traders and private investors use while markets are open — price-moving announcements, market statistics, broker research summaries and short newsflashes on listed companies. Its name appears in English-language market coverage most often in the credit line of a republished item, in the form of a report that begins by noting what the Zhitong Finance app has learned or published about a stock, an index or a flow of capital.

Founding and the company behind the service

Zhitong Finance was founded in 2013. The operating company behind the service is Shenzhen Zhitong Financial Information Technology Services, the full corporate name under which company databases list the business. That corporate identity matters for understanding what kind of outlet Zhitong is. It is not a newspaper group, a broadcaster or a state wire service; it is a financial information technology company, built to collect, process and distribute market information as a product. The founding year places its creation in the period when Chinese retail investing was moving decisively onto mobile phones and when demand was growing for Chinese-language coverage that followed Chinese companies wherever they were listed, rather than only on mainland exchanges. Zhitong Finance was built for that demand, and the structure described in company profiles — a platform, an app and a website rather than a printed publication — reflects a business that was digital from the start.

Headquarters in Shenzhen

The headquarters of Zhitong Finance is at No. 31 Tairan 8th Road in Shenzhen, in the Futian area of the city. Shenzhen is a deliberate and fitting base for a service of this kind. The city is one of China's principal financial and technology centres, home to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange and to a large concentration of listed technology and manufacturing companies, and it sits immediately across the border from Hong Kong. A market-information company based in Shenzhen therefore operates inside the mainland financial system while remaining geographically close to the Hong Kong market that forms so much of its editorial focus. Company listings consistently give the Tairan 8th Road address and Shenzhen, Guangdong, as the company's location, and no separate headquarters in another city is recorded for the service.

Focus on global capital markets

The defining editorial feature of Zhitong Finance is its focus on the global capital market, with particular attention to Hong Kong-listed and United States-listed Chinese companies. That focus is visible in the output that other platforms republish under its name. Its regular statistical products track Hong Kong stocks in detail: A-share and H-share premium rates for companies listed in both markets, Hong Kong short-selling statistics and ratios, and the most actively traded stocks through the Shanghai-Hong Kong and Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect schemes. Its market reporting follows southbound and northbound capital flows through Stock Connect, records net buying and selling by those channels, and reports Hong Kong market briefings and closing analysis. For a mainland-based investor, those are precisely the data points needed to follow Chinese companies listed offshore, and Zhitong's specialisation is in producing them quickly, repeatedly and in a standard format that other financial platforms can reuse.

The app, the website and newsflashes

Zhitong Finance delivers its information through its app and its website. The app, referred to in republished English reporting as the Zhitong Finance App and in Chinese as the Zhitong Caijing app, is the channel most often cited as the source of an item, with reports routinely introduced by the formula that the Zhitong Finance App had learned or reported a development. Alongside longer market analysis, the service produces newsflashes — short, time-stamped items reporting a company announcement, a results release, a shareholding change recorded by the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, or a clarification statement issued by a listed company. Examples of the form include flashes reporting a transfer of shares between custodians with its market value and percentage of a company, and flashes carrying a listed company's denial of a rumour circulating online. That combination of a continuously updated flash service with data products and analysis is what allows the outlet to function as a wire for market participants who need information during the trading day rather than after it.

Market data, statistics and research coverage

Beyond newsflashes, the verified description of the service covers three related products: stock market data, economic news and investment advice. The data side is the most distinctive. Zhitong's recurring statistics on A/H premiums compare the prices of the same company in mainland and Hong Kong trading; its short-selling statistics rank Hong Kong stocks by short-selling ratio and amount; and its Stock Connect tables rank the most actively traded shares for southbound and northbound investors. The service also summarises and relays securities-firm research, so that a broker's strategy report on Hong Kong stocks, A-shares or United States markets reaches Zhitong's audience in digested form, attributed to the issuing firm. Its daily Hong Kong market commentary, republished in English under headings about unravelling or reviewing the Hong Kong session, works through the day's index moves, sector performance and the overseas developments — from United States Treasury yields to Federal Reserve expectations — that had moved Hong Kong trading. Together, these products cover the full information diet of an investor in Chinese equities listed at home and abroad.

Syndication and republication

Zhitong Finance is widely syndicated. Its reports are republished, with attribution to Zhitong Caijing or to the Zhitong Finance App, by other financial platforms that serve investors outside the mainland, including broker and market-data services that carry its Hong Kong stock statistics, its Stock Connect activity tables, its early market briefings and its company newsflashes in English. That republication pattern is an important part of how the outlet works. A specialised Chinese-language market wire earns much of its reach not only from readers who open its own app, but from the many trading and news platforms that license or reproduce its flashes and statistics for their own users. When an English-reading investor encounters a Hong Kong market item credited to Zhitong on a brokerage news feed, they are seeing the downstream end of that syndication chain. The consistency of the credit — Zhitong's name attached to data tables and flashes alike — has made it a recognisable source brand in Hong Kong and offshore Chinese equity coverage.

Investors and funding

Company databases record the investors in Zhitong Finance as Newlink Group, Cowin Capital and Guoli Minsheng Equity Investment, and describe its latest funding round as a corporate minority investment. Those backers give a picture of a company that attracted institutional and corporate capital rather than remaining a small independent website. Cowin Capital and Guoli Minsheng are investment firms, while Newlink Group is a corporate investor, and the combination recorded by the databases is consistent with a financial technology business whose value lies in its data, its distribution and its audience of active investors. The funding record does not make Zhitong a subsidiary of a securities firm or of a media conglomerate in the public descriptions available; it remains listed as the Shenzhen-based company operating its own platform under its own name.

Audience and users

The audience described for Zhitong Finance consists of investors and individuals interested in the financial and capital markets. That is a narrower and more demanding readership than the audience for general financial journalism. Its users follow live prices, trading statistics and company announcements, and they use the service as an input to decisions rather than only as reading material. The editorial choices follow from that audience: heavy coverage of Hong Kong-listed Chinese companies and of United States-listed Chinese stocks, close attention to Stock Connect flows that link mainland money to the Hong Kong market, rapid republication of listed-company announcements, and regular statistical tables published to a timetable tied to the trading day. A reader who wants background features on the Chinese economy will find economic news in the service, but the core of the product, as the company itself is described, is market information — data, flashes and advice organised around listed securities.

Place in China's financial information industry

Zhitong Finance occupies a specific place in China's media landscape: it is one of the specialised financial information services that grew up alongside mobile investing, supplying market news and data in Chinese to investors whose portfolios cross the mainland, Hong Kong and United States markets. Founded in 2013, operated by Shenzhen Zhitong Financial Information Technology Services from No. 31 Tairan 8th Road in Shenzhen, and backed by Newlink Group, Cowin Capital and Guoli Minsheng Equity Investment, it has built its reputation on the speed and regularity of its flashes, its Hong Kong stock statistics and its Stock Connect and A/H premium data. Its wide syndication means its reporting is encountered far beyond its own app and website, on the brokerage and market platforms that republish it. For anyone tracing the source of a Hong Kong or offshore Chinese market report, the Zhitong Finance credit therefore signals a Shenzhen-based market wire whose entire business is the global capital market as it affects Chinese-listed companies and the investors who trade them.