Steve Wynn criticizes China's intervention in the stock market …

ByBob Bryan america, bloombergchina, china, chinese, composite, people, prouser, shanghai, shanghai-composite, wednesday, year Comments Off

REUTERS/Fred ProuserSteve Wynn.

Steve Wynn wouldn’t have done that.

China’s stock market has been on an epic roller-coaster ride this year.

After a 150% jump in a few months, stocks quickly tanked more than 30%.

In its desperate efforts to stop the crash, China’s government stepped in and suspended all initial public offerings, limited the number of trades investors could execute in a day, and suspended trading in numerous stocks.

But Wynn, the casino billionaire, thinks all this intervention is a big mistake.

“I am not an expert on China and I’m not even a Wall Street expert, but I am a person who’s been in a public company for 40 years,” Wynn said during an earnings call on Wednesday.

“And my own experience, had I been consulted, I would’ve said don’t do that exactly. Because if someone thinks that you’re going to close the door on their ability to sell or trade their shares, you can only do that for a certain length of time and then the minute you finish doing it, the people scamper for the door because there’s a loss of trust.”

Indeed, one of the most important characteristics of a well-functioning market is how freely securities can trade.

And so in Wynn’s view, shutting certain investors out of the market simply to prop up prices is only creating an inevitable collapse in prices. It is basically trading short-term stability for pain in the future — pain that is probably unavoidable.

Money has been entering — and leaving — the Chinese stock market like crazy, and measures taken by the government haven’t exactly stopped the damage. It’s unclear whether they will.

BloombergChina’s Shanghai Composite Index.

Author

Bob Bryan