(Bloomberg) — Some of the exchange‑traded funds heavily owned by China’s so‑called national team saw record outflows on Thursday, a development that aligns with broader efforts to temper the stock market rally.

The Huatai-Pinebridge CSI 300 ETF saw a record 20.2 billion yuan ($2.9 billion) of outflows on Thursday — the most since the fund’s inception in 2012 — as the gauge it tracks rose 0.2%. Outflows in other funds, such as the E Fund CSI 300 ETF and ChinaAMC CSI 300 ETF, also hit records.

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The trading motives of the national team, a group of state‑backed institutional investors, may hint at official attempts to rein in a rally driven by AI enthusiasm and earnings optimism. Their selling also comes a day after regulators unexpectedly tightened margin financing, a step investors largely shrugged off as a tactic to target speculative trades in certain tech names.

“It looks like the National Team is selling and making an effort to cool the market down,” said Jiang Liangqing, managing director at Zhuhai Greenbamboo Private Fund Management. “While speculation has been rampant and trading excessive in some parts of the market, selling ETFs may still help in cooling that and won’t create a conflict of interest.”

The benchmark CSI 300 Index rose as much as 0.9% on Friday and is up 3.6% for the year. The tech‑heavy ChiNext Index climbed as much as 1.2% Friday, after a 0.6% gain Thursday.

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