Amid a rout in the Hong Kong and mainland China stock markets last year, investors kept faith in many large Hong Kong-listed exchange traded funds committing about $10bn in net inflows even as losses mounted.Hong Kong’s flagship Hang Seng index dropped 15.5 per cent and the CSI 300 Index, which tracks the biggest China A-share stocks, fell 21.6 per cent last year — their worst performance in 11 and four years respectively — as investors suffered a challenging year.

But the asset size of Hong Kong’s ETF market fell by much less than these two major indices, by only 10.5 per cent, to HK$384bn ($48.9bn) at end-December 2022, down from HK$428.67bn 12 months earlier, according to Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing data.

The average daily turnover for Hong Kong-listed ETFs was much higher in 2022, hitting HK$9.8bn, 48 per cent higher than the HK$6.6bn recorded for 2021.