On April 10, the Shanghai Stock Exchange released the &#34;Trading Rules (Draft for Comments)&#34;, proposing to adjust the daily price fluctuation limit for main board ST and *ST stocks from ±5% to ±10%, fully aligning with the trading rules for ordinary main board stocks.
If this new regulation is officially implemented, this set of special trading rules that has lasted for 13 years will undergo significant changes.
Industry insiders believe that the shift from relying on strict limits on fluctuations to control risks in the past, to now guiding the market to self-regulate through improved systems, strengthened supervision, and smooth pricing mechanisms, reflects the maturity and evolution of capital market regulatory concepts. It also signifies that after the full implementation of the registration system, the A-share market is steadily moving towards a more mature and efficient market system.
Origin
The 5% price fluctuation limit for ST stocks was born out of the risk prevention needs during a specific historical stage of A-shares.
In April 2012, the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges officially lowered the price fluctuation limit for risk warning stocks from 10% to 5%, with three core intentions:
First, to protect small and medium investors. ST and *ST companies correspond to continuous losses, financial abnormalities, and high delisting risks in their fundamentals, leading to severe stock price fluctuations. Regulators hoped to reduce daily profit and loss margins through narrow fluctuation limits, minimizing the huge losses of retail investors who blindly follow trends and creating a risk &#34;buffer zone.&#34;
Second, to curb shell resource speculation. In the early years, the delisting mechanism for A-shares was not perfect, and &#34;shell value&#34; was scarce. ST stocks often became targets for speculative funds, with the 5% limit on continuous price increases seen as a &#34;cooling valve&#34; to attempt to compress speculation space and increase control costs, thereby curbing irrational speculation.
Third, to stabilize market operations. The ST sector has a high proportion of retail investors and significant emotion-driven characteristics. Narrow limits can smooth out extreme market conditions, preventing panic selling under negative news and frenzied buying under positive news, thus avoiding the spillover of risks from a single sector and maintaining overall market stability.
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Source: Visual China
However, after 13 years of operation, this institutional design has gradually deviated, leading to three major persistent issues:
Liquidity exhaustion and severe price distortion. Under the 5% narrow space, ST stocks can easily fall into a continuous low-volume &#34;one-word board&#34; predicament—retail investors cannot buy in during positive news, and funds are locked; during negative news, sell orders pile up, and investors cannot stop losses. Stock prices completely detach from fundamentals, becoming tools for capital control, with pricing functions entirely ineffective.
Data shows that the current average turnover rate of the ST sector is only 0.8%, far lower than that of ordinary stocks, highlighting liquidity discounts.
Persistent shell speculation issues and low delisting efficiency. Under the 5% limit, even if poor-quality ST stocks continuously hit the daily limit down, it is difficult to quickly fall below the 1 yuan par value to trigger the delisting red line. Some companies rely on financial adjustments and asset maneuvers to repeatedly &#34;maintain their shells,&#34; occupying market resources for a long time, which is contrary to the core direction of &#34;survival of the fittest&#34; under the registration system
Rule fragmentation and lack of fairness. The STAR Market and ChiNext have long implemented a 20% price fluctuation limit for ST stocks, creating a &#34;double standard&#34; compared to the main board. This discrepancy not only undermines the uniformity of rules but also generates arbitrage opportunities across different boards, distorting capital allocation logic and contradicting the principles of fairness in market-oriented reform.
Reform
&#34;The initial 5% price fluctuation limit was intended to control risks and cool down speculation; now, relaxing the limit in line with the direction of the registration system reform is essentially a comprehensive upgrade of the entire market ecology, regulatory thinking, and investment logic,&#34; industry insiders said. The recent relaxation of the price fluctuation limit for ST stocks to 10% is not merely a simple &#34;deregulation of risks,&#34; but a proactive innovation by regulators to align with market trends and address institutional pain points.
Ending the &#34;one-word board&#34; dilemma. Doubling the 10% fluctuation space allows positive and negative information to be fully digested in a single day, significantly reducing the occurrence of consecutive price limits. On one hand, the value recovery of quality ST stocks is no longer artificially suppressed, allowing capital to enter smoothly and valuations to return more efficiently; on the other hand, the risks of poor-quality stocks can be quickly released, avoiding a long-term liquidity crisis akin to &#34;slow knife cuts,&#34; bringing prices closer to their true value.
Unifying market rules. After the adjustment, the price fluctuation limits for ST stocks on the main board will be consistent with ordinary stocks, while also aligning with the market-oriented rules of the STAR Market and ChiNext, achieving coordinated unification of trading mechanisms across A-share sectors. This is a key step in implementing the reform direction of &#34;market-oriented, rule of law, and internationalization,&#34; eliminating institutional arbitrage opportunities and enhancing overall market fairness.
Compressing manipulation space. Under the 5% limit, speculative funds only need a small amount of capital to &#34;lock in&#34; price limits, allowing for long-term control and harvesting of retail investors. After the relaxation to 10%, the cost of capital control rises sharply, making it much more difficult to continuously push up or suppress prices. While short-term volatility may seem to increase, it can reduce the traps of &#34;high-position acceptance and inability to escape&#34; in the long run, better protecting investors.
Accelerating survival of the fittest. With the full implementation of the registration system, the normalization of delisting has become a trend. Relaxing the price fluctuation limits can force market differentiation: ST stocks with improved fundamentals and clear expectations for delisting or restructuring will gain capital recognition and achieve value reassessment; while shell stocks that continue to incur losses and lack core business will accelerate their decline and be quickly cleared, fundamentally cooling the &#34;shell speculation&#34; trend and optimizing market resource allocation.
It is worth noting that this adjustment is part of the integration of the relevant consultation opinions from June 2025, and other risk control measures remain unchanged. For example, investors must still sign a risk disclosure statement when purchasing ST/*ST stocks for the first time, and the daily cumulative purchase limit for a single stock (not exceeding 500,000 shares, excluding shares repurchased by listed companies and shares increased by shareholders holding more than 5% according to disclosed plans) remains unchanged.
Current situation
According to incomplete statistics, as of April 10, 2026, there are a total of 132 ST and *ST stocks on the Shanghai and Shenzhen main boards. These companies generally face issues such as operational pressure, performance losses, and significant debt burdens, with some stocks having reached multiple delisting risk indicators, their stock prices remaining in a low-level fluctuation for a long time, and some stocks even experiencing consecutive price limits, nearing delisting at par value
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Taking ST WanFang as an example, since 2026, the stock price has fallen by more than 70%, with 43 instances of daily limit down and 15 instances of daily limit up occurring within just 63 trading days, resulting in an extreme &#34;bungee jumping&#34; market where the stock price has almost entirely operated on the limit up and down boards, exhibiting very volatile fluctuations.
Yang Delong, chief economist of Qianhai Kaiyuan Fund, stated to the media that the limit on the price fluctuations of ST stocks on the Shanghai main board has been relaxed from 5% to 10%, aligning with the rules for ordinary stocks on the main board. This not only enhances market activity and investment convenience but also significantly amplifies investment risks. Once favorable news emerges, stock prices rise faster, and when negative news appears, they drop more rapidly, presenting a &#34;double-edged sword&#34; for investors.
Industry insiders analyzed that in the short term, the intensified volatility of the ST sector has become a foregone conclusion, and the probability of extreme market conditions such as &#34;heaven and earth boards&#34; will also increase.
After the new regulations take effect, high-quality targets with clear expectations for delisting removal, achieving profitability, and completing restructuring are expected to see a faster pace of valuation recovery and are more likely to attract medium to long-term funds; however, for continuously loss-making companies lacking restructuring prospects and on the verge of delisting, the potential for a single-day drop of 10% may accelerate their decline, further speeding up the delisting process, and the traditional &#34;shell value&#34; will gradually approach zero.
From a medium to long-term perspective, this adjustment is an important step in the market-oriented reform of the A-share market. By replacing the original rigid restrictions with a more efficient market pricing mechanism, it helps promote the survival of the fittest in the market, making the A-share market ecosystem more mature and healthy.
Yang Delong also suggested that investors must make prudent decisions based on the company's fundamentals when participating in related targets, recognizing the risk warning attributes of ST stocks and avoiding blindly chasing speculative themes like &#34;a black chicken turning into a phoenix.&#34;
*Appendix: 132 ST/ST stocks on the Shanghai and Shenzhen main boards (Source: Tonghuashun Software)
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The Shanghai Stock Exchange has released the "Trading Rules (Draft for Comments)", proposing to adjust the daily price fluctuation limit for main board ST and *ST stocks from ±5% to ±10%. This reform marks the maturity of the regulatory concept in the A-share market, aiming to guide market self-regulation through improved systems and strengthened supervision. The previous ±5% fluctuation limit was mainly to protect small and medium investors and stabilize the market, but over time, this system has led to liquidity depletion and price distortion. If the new regulations are implemented, they will help enhance the liquidity and market efficiency of ST stocks

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