The U.S.-listed shares of China-based companies were seeing big and broad gains in premarket trading Friday, after Reuters reported that China’s central bank accepted Ant Group’s application to set up a financial holding company.
That fueled hopes that China’s regulatory crackdown was easing. The iShares China Large-Cap exchange-traded fund FXI, +1.83% jumped 4.1%. Among the more-active China American depositary shares (ADS), shares of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. BABA, +0.78% shot up 9.3%, NIO Inc. NIO, +8.29% ran up 5.1%, JD.com Inc. JD, +5.19% climbed 9.2%, Pinduoduo Inc. PDD, +0.41% powered up 6.8% and XPeng Inc. XPEV, +9.78% hiked up 6.7%. The FXI ETF has gained 0.1% over the past three months through Thursday, while the S&P 500 SPX, +0.22% has dropped 16.9%.