(A) New Third Board market liquidity problems
As a national floor trading market, the liquidity of the New Third Board market has been insufficient, and the share transfer of most listed companies is even zero. A large number of top 10 shareholders of listed companies account for 100%, and only a few listed companies are relatively active. The biggest problem in the New Third Board market is the liquidity of the market. The listed companies' share transfer transactions are weak, which makes the functions of market price discovery, subsequent share transfer and financing not effectively highlighted.
(B) Share transfer system market maker system
Considering that most listed companies in the New Third Board market are small and medium-sized enterprises, with small share capital, limited transactions and poor market liquidity, the market maker system is introduced into the trading system of the New Third Board market. On the basis of more than one year's operation, the market maker system provides institutional support for liquidity maintenance, price discovery and share transfer transactions in the New Third Board market, and provides an important guarantee for the development of the New Third Board market. However, some problems of the market maker system have gradually emerged.
One is its own funds. Market makers occupy their own funds for market-making services, and the supply capacity of market-making services is affected by the scale of their own funds. This mechanism requires market makers to trade with listed companies and investors with their own funds. In order to guard against risks and ensure profits, market makers require a large discount rate, which is not good for enterprises. At the same time, this mechanism directly leads to the high premium of share transfer on the first day of listing.
The second is the appropriateness of the price difference. In the new third board market maker system, the interests of market makers come from two aspects: first, capital gains; The second is the difference between buying quotation and selling quotation. Because the liquidity of the whole market is poor and the market-making cost of market makers is high, the proper choice of market makers is to reduce the cost of buying shares and maintain a large spread. Under the constraint of price difference and income, the market maker system as a whole presents a pattern of insufficient liquidity, which will form a self-circulating liquidity exhaustion mechanism, which also makes it difficult to perfect the price discovery function.
The third is microstructure. First, in the New Third Board market, the proportion of listed companies making market transfer is still low. As of February 20, 20 16, the stock companies that can be transferred by the New Third Board account for about 24% of all listed companies; Second, because there are two-way transactions in market-making transfer, and the number of market-making transfers is much lower than that of agreement transfer in most of the time, the dominant position of market-making transfer in the transfer of shares in the New Third Board is not prominent; Third, listed companies tend to transfer by agreement. The scale of the agreement transfer is large, the transaction is simple, and the market-making transfer has the problem of share occupation; Fourthly, the market-making quotation rules also have a technical impact on the market-making system.
Finally, the market situation has a great influence on the market maker system. If the new third board market is improving all the way, the most rational choice for market makers is to hold shares and get capital gains, which is higher than the income from market-making services. Taking the fourth quarter of 20 14 as an example, the capital gain is 130 times of the spread income; In the first quarter of 20 15, the ratio was still as high as 78 times. If the new third board market is facing adjustment or sharp decline, the rational choice of market makers is to quote negatively or reduce the frequency of quotation. This also makes the role of the market-making mechanism of the New Third Board not fully exerted.
(C) New Third Board Hierarchy
The main goal of the design and implementation of the new third board stratification system is to improve the liquidity of the new third board market. Through the construction of market stratification mechanism, it is equivalent to establishing a selection mechanism to classify and manage companies with different risk characteristics at different stages of development and realize the differentiated arrangement of the system. The design intention of this policy is clear and correct. The stratification mechanism of the New Third Board is very important for improving market liquidity, cultivating innovative and entrepreneurial growth enterprises, developing multi-level capital markets and solving small and medium-sized enterprises.
Whether the financing difficulty of enterprises can really play a leading role is a question worthy of discussion.
In terms of mechanism design, the hierarchical mechanism of the New Third Board is a top-down institutional arrangement. The most mature stratification mechanism is Nasdaq market, but its stratification mechanism is caused by bottom-up market. In 2006, NASDAQ established a global select market layer. In the past 20 years, many enterprises have become excellent enterprises, so it is necessary to adopt differentiated arrangements to adapt to the changes of enterprises. At the same time, establish a hierarchical mechanism to attract large innovative enterprises to list on Nasdaq and compete with NYSE.
From the perspective of liquidity improvement, it remains to be seen whether the stratification mechanism can improve the liquidity of the whole market. If there is a huge mismatch between supply and demand in the New Third Board market, the transaction pricing mechanism is unreasonable, and the function of market financing and serving the real economy is not prominent, then the listed companies in the innovation layer will be slowly affected by market institutional problems, and their liquidity will be gradually eroded, while the listed companies in the basic layer will even slowly slide into the bottom of nobody's interest and become "zombie" listed companies. In fact, the stratification system has not brought about the increase of market liquidity, but only changed the structure of market liquidity.
From the design of trading mechanism, can the innovation layer after the stratification of the New Third Board introduce the bidding trading system? If we continue the market maker system, we need to solve many problems of the market maker system quickly. If the bidding trading system is to be introduced, then the listed companies in the innovation layer are required to have great investment demand. Where should this huge investment demand come from? Most institutional investors will not allocate assets in the innovation layer of the New Third Board. The liquidity of GEM is relatively poor at the moment of risk exposure, and the overall liquidity of the innovation layer of the New Third Board is almost no better than that of GEM. It is harmful to protect the rights and interests of small and medium-sized investors to greatly reduce the investor suitability standard, which is not an appropriate policy choice. In order to adapt to the development of innovation layer, the design of trading mechanism is still a big problem.
(D) New Third Board Transfer Mechanism
The Decision on Issues Related to the National Share Transfer System for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises proposes that companies listed in the National Share Transfer System can directly apply to the stock exchange for listing transactions if they meet the listing conditions. 20 15 1 10 The Opinions of the CSRC on Further Promoting the Development of the National Small and Medium-sized Enterprise Share Transfer System emphasizes that adhering to the independent market position of the New Third Board, the listing of the New Third Board is not a transitional arrangement. It is necessary to establish a multi-level capital market system, promote the pilot transfer to the Growth Enterprise Market, and explore the docking mechanism with regional equity markets.
The possibility of transferring the listing of the New Third Board is a major driving force for many listed companies, especially when the IPO is suspended or the IPO queue is serious. It is a "detour" strategy for many listed companies to transfer the listing of the New Third Board to the Growth Enterprise Market or the small and medium-sized board. Under the "temptation" of the transfer board, the New Third Board has become a hot spot for SMEs to embrace the capital market.
Since China's stock issuance and listing are separated, after the public offering is approved by the CSRC, it needs to be approved by the exchange before listing. Generally speaking, most companies are promoting the issuance and listing at the same time, and they usually don't feel the separation of issuance and listing. If a listed company delists from the New Third Board and then issues shares on the Growth Enterprise Market, is this a transfer? This is essentially the normal declaration and review of the public offering and listing of enterprises. In the market expectation, the transfer mechanism is that after the New Third Board is listed, it can be directly listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange after meeting certain conditions and passing the examination of the Exchange. At present, the regulatory authorities are not clear about the transfer mechanism, but only generally explain that it is necessary to conduct a pilot study on the transfer of listed companies in the share transfer system to the Growth Enterprise Market.
It seems that the regulatory authorities and the market have not fully understood the impact of the fuzzy transfer board. In fact, some companies with relatively large assets, business income and share capital are listed on the New Third Board, hoping to enter the green channel of the New Third Board and get out of the fast lane of public offering and listing after listing on the New Third Board and entering the innovation layer. Then, problems followed. Are so many companies trying to enter the GEM together, or continue to follow the IPO process? If you can go directly to the GEM for listing and trading, then the IPO review procedure of the GEM will be useless, and the New Third Board will become a transit point for listing on the GEM. This will bring more uncertainty to the market positioning, economic function and hierarchical differentiation of GEM and NEEQ. If this uncertainty persists, it will be extremely unfavorable to the matching of market supply and demand, the play of market mechanism and the expansion of market functions.
(V) Appropriateness of investors in the New Third Board
When rethinking the liquidity of the New Third Board, the appropriateness of investors has always been an important issue. In other words, the supply of investors and their funds can't keep up with the scale expansion of listed companies in the New Third Board, which leads to the mismatch between supply and demand in the whole market and makes the liquidity of the New Third Board poor. According to the expansion speed at the end of 20 15 and the beginning of 20 16, the number of companies listed on the New Third Board will exceed 1000 in the second half of 20 16. By then, the mismatch between supply and demand in the market will be more prominent, and the overall liquidity of the market will be worse.