The sense of “FOMO” in China is “increasing.”

So said Goldman’s Scott Rubner on Monday, a session during which the SHCOMP scored what, if I didn’t know anything about state-buying and retail psychology in Chinese equities, I’d call an “unlikely” 8% single-session rally.

But I do know a thing or two (or five) about how impactful state-buying in China can be (when it’s determined enough, otherwise it can be wholly ineffectual), and also a bit about locals’ sometimes hilarious penchant for speculation. Leveraged speculation.

I wrote about September 30’s “absolutely insane” A-share buying here, but I wanted to quickly highlight Rubner’s commentary and a few charts, starting with the two visuals below. The figure on the left shows Goldman’s prime desk saw massive — record — Chinese equities buying last week. Nearly three-quarters of that was single-stocks, according to Rubner, and as you can see, the flow was a near six-standard deviation event. So, a black swan. (Last week’s H-share rally counted as a five-sigma event, by the way, and the five-session move on the CSI 300 is even more anomalous, singing something close to a seven-sigma swan song.)

The figure on the right shows a veritable explosion in call-buying on the China ETF. That aligns well with JPMorgan’s observation about an inverted upside skew for H-shares. If you’re wondering who was buying, Rubner suggested it’s “predominately US macro hedge funds.”

I mentioned on Monday morning that Chinese aren’t averse to leverage. The figure on the left, below, underscores the point. It illustrates margin-buying on the mainland.

The surge “suggest[s] retail participation picking up,” Rubner said, adding that the visual shows where things stood as of Friday’s close. “I anticipate this being higher today,” Scott remarked. (I think that’s a safe assumption.)

On the right, you can see H-share buying through the links. There’s a lot of it going on. Basically it’s buy everything. Buy mainland shares. Buy Hong Kong shares. Buy all of it. Then borrow money and buy some more.

Rubner said he fielded the most questions about China he’s ever received over the weekend. “Investors are doing work right now,” he wrote, adding that allocations to Chinese equities were at five-year lows headed into last week, which is to say international investors were woefully under-exposed just ahead of the “big bang” “stimmy” unveil.

“Short covering has increased,” Rubner went on, adding that Goldman’s seeing “real” long-only demand too. The bank’s Hong Kong “top short” basket was squeezed to the tune of 10.3% Monday, the “third-largest single-day bounce on record.”