1st LD-Writethru: Chinese shares register small gains after rates cut

Chinese shares closed higher on Monday after the central bank cut the benchmark interest rates last Friday.

The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index edged up 0.5 percent to end at 3,429.58 points. The Shenzhen Component Index rose 0.73 percent to close at 11,687.77 points.

The ChiNext Index, which tracks China's NASDAQ-style board of growth enterprises, lost 0.43 percent to close at 2,527.48 points.

Total turnover on the Shanghai and Shenzhen bourses stood at 1.1 trillion yuan (about 173 billion U.S. dollars), slightly up from 1.04 trillion yuan on the previous trading day.

The agriculture and automobile industry led the rise while the transportation and medical sectors saw the biggest losses.

The indexes opened up in the morning following the central bank's decision to cut both the benchmark interest rates and the reserve requirement ratio (RRR) last Friday.

The market then fluctuated during the day and dipped into negative territory for a short time in the afternoon before recovering at the end of trading.

In its latest move to boost the economy, the People's Bank of China (PBOC) cut the interest rates for one-year loans and deposits by 25 basis points to 4.35 percent and 1.5 percent respectively. It also lowered the RRR for financial institutions by 0.5 percentage points, to further reduce the cost of financing.

This is the fifth RRR reduction in nearly nine months and the sixth round of interest cuts in nearly 11 months.

The cut of both the interest rates and RRR on Friday was beyond expectation and would boost the risk appetite of retail investors in the short term, said Zhang Yidong, chief strategist with Industrial Securities.

Still, the higher risk appetite will not last as leveraged trading is now basically under control and there's no solid economic foundation for a typical bull market, Zhang said. Endi