Today, A-shares had quite an interesting session—the major indexes all plunged in the morning, but managed to claw their way back by midday, turning green across the board. Even more surreal, the morning turnover didn’t even break one trillion, clocking in at just 992.7 billion. That’s an unusually low volume. What’s next? Let’s break it down.

**First, looking at external markets**
Last night, US stocks didn’t show a clear direction, with the three major indexes mixed. However, the chip sector was quite exuberant: the big GPU player rose 2.12%, and SanDisk, leader in memory chips, surged an impressive 9.74%. Over in Asia-Pacific today, each market did its own thing: Japan dropped nearly 1.5%, South Korea dipped in the morning but bounced back about 1% by midday, while Australia was basically flat.

**Divergence in Chinese assets**
US-listed Chinese stocks saw a modest gain of 0.39% last night. The A50 futures rose 0.17% in the night session but slipped back to 0.02% by midday. Hong Kong stocks were a bit weak in the morning, with the Hang Seng Index opening down 0.4% before narrowing the loss to 0.21%. The Hang Seng Tech Index at one point fell over 1% but recovered to around -0.2% by midday.

**A-shares’ reversal playbook**
In the morning, thematic stocks in Shanghai were hammered right at the open, but heavyweights held the index from falling too hard. The intraday low was a 0.31% drop, but then thematic stocks led a counterattack, and by midday the Shanghai Composite had turned positive, closing up 0.08% at 3,878.99 points. The Shenzhen Component, ChiNext, and STAR 50 indexes were down over 0.50%, 0.55%, and 1.65% respectively in the morning, but all turned positive by midday: +0.39%, +0.47%, +0.05%.

Individual stocks were even more dramatic—3,535 rose, 1,705 fell, and only 107 dropped more than 3%. But the volume was really something else: both indexes and stocks went up, but turnover still didn’t break one trillion. At this rate, today might set another record for low trading volume.

**How to interpret the current market?**
Actually, shrinking volume isn’t surprising. Before a true spring rally kicks off, a period of adjustment and shakeout is inevitable. Looking back at last September’s bull run, every time volume shrank to the 1.5-1.6 trillion range, it usually marked a stage bottom, followed by a rally.

The key time to watch is next Thursday early morning (Beijing time, December 11), when the Fed’s rate cut decision is due. If trading volume picks up in mid-December and market sentiment recovers, the spring rally could quietly get underway.