From the pages of the South China Morning Post this week in 1973
The government and the stock exchanges rolled out more weapons in the battle to cool down Hong Kong's overheated stock market.
The latest three-pronged attack included putting a stop to civil servants playing the market; the exchanges cancelling two more afternoon trading sessions for the week and the Commissioner of Banking calling on all banks to withdraw some of the massive amount of ready cash from the market.
But even as the new moves were being made to restore sanity to the market, hundreds of people in Central were scrambling to get in on the new Shun Tak Shipping Company issue.
Civil servants were banned from using office telephones to buy or sell shares and were told they were not to leave their desks during office hours to visit brokers' offices or stock exchanges. The four stock exchanges said cancelling trading on Monday and Friday afternoons would allow brokers to clear some of the backlog of paperwork caused by recent hectic trading.
The Commissioner of Banking said figures indicated that more than 20 per cent of all bank advances were to market investors and asked the banks to review their loan arrangements and to reduce the volume of credit given to people to buy shares.
