The first months of any life can be an anxious time. Stock Connect, offspring of a union between the Hong Kong and Shanghai stock exchanges, has been monitored with fretful concern.

Stock Connect allows investors based in China to buy Hong Kong-listed ‘H’ shares (the southbound trade), and international investors to buy Shanghai-listed ‘A’ shares (northbound). Each direction has a quota — Rmb300 ($48bn) going north and Rmb250bn ($40bn) heading south — and limits the value of daily trade. Besides the first few days heading north, as foreigners snapped up A shares, none of these ceilings have been hit.

So it is tempting to conclude that the scheme is a disappointment. That is too simplistic. True, mainland buyers have invested only $4bn, a tenth of the money permitted. Since the scheme began, however, Shanghai has returned 33 per cent, treble the H share index. Hong Kong’s blue chip Hang Seng, even worse, has been flat. Southbound participants, predominantly retail, have preferred to remain at home.