| China just delivered another in a series of stimulus disappointments that help explain why its equities have lagged so far behind major peers over the past five years. While the authorities may ultimately deliver something like the sort of stimulus needed to turn around the world's second-largest economy, Tuesday's tone-deaf press conference means mainland stocks will be stuck singing the blues. The bold announcements that came in the final days of September had energized investors to reconsider the low to non-existent allocations they had made to Chinese assets. Frustrated by China's glacial response to a deepening deterioration in its economy — and bruised by a series of policy flip-flops that had often hit the highest-flying shares the hardest — major international portfolio managers were handling the country's stocks with kid gloves. Sure, they seemed to be saying, those shares are much cheaper than those of most major economies based on standard valuation measures, but that seems all too reasonable given recent history. As things now stand, China's bait-and-switch stimulus is likely to reinforce a willingness to apply hefty risk premiums for the nation's shares. The optics of laying the groundwork for the 11% opening surge for the CSI 300 Index seen Tuesday, and then underwhelming at the marquee event for the day — at one stage the equity index was threatening to erase all those gains — are poor to say the least. Even if the authorities ultimately succeed in turning the economy around, investors just received a fresh reminder of the dangers of piling in to China in response to government rhetoric about bold stimulus plans. Indeed, they just added another incident to the long list of rapid reversals that help to encourage traders to book profits at the earliest opportunity whenever Chinese equities stage an impressive rally. Garfield Reynolds leads Bloomberg's Markets Live blog in Asia and is based in Sydney. | 
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