China QFII funds see slight gains in July

SHANGHAI, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Foreign funds investing in Chinese securities saw net asset value per unit rise in July as the stock market rebounded from June's falls, but underperformed their local peers, a study by fund data firm Lipper showed.

Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (QFII) funds in the survey made an average return of 0.74 percent last month, roughly in line with a 0.70 percent rise in the benchmark CSI300 Index .CSI300, said Lipper, a Thomson Reuters company.

Since the start of the year, however, the funds have posted a negative return of 41.99 percent, compared with a 46.99 percent drop in the CSI300, which includes 300 shares trading on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges.

Nineteen QFII funds saw a rise in assets to $7.374 billion in July, up 11.4 percent from the previous month's $6.619 billion, the report added.

Among domestic Chinese open-ended funds, equity funds led the gainers with an average rise of 2.04 percent in net asset value per unit, while yuan bond funds rose 0.35 percent and money market funds were up 0.25 percent. Mixed-asset funds ranged from a decline of 0.06 percent to a gain of 1.68 percent.

Closed-end funds posted an average negative return of 2.84 percent in July.

For the year to end-July, however, equity funds were the biggest losers with a negative return of 42.22 percent, while only money market funds posted a gain, at 1.72 percent.

Nine Qualified Domestic Institutional Investor (QDII) funds, which invest Chinese clients' money in overseas markets, posted an average negative return of 1.34 percent in July. (Reporting by Edmund Klamann; Editing by Jonathan Hopfner)