(Bloomberg) -- China’s state funds bought around $50 billion of the nation’s equities over the past five months, with purchases slowing during the annual meeting of the nation’s top legislators, according to an analysis by Bloomberg Intelligence.

The so-called National Team, including sovereign wealth fund Central Huijin Investment Ltd., made most of the purchases in late January and early February through exchange-traded funds, a BI report showed. While some $5 billion was likely spent in the first two days last week, the flows dwindled to almost nothing after that, the data indicated.

The earlier interventions occurred during the heaviest days of selling in a market meltdown that saw the benchmark gauge shed as much as 7.3% this year as quants offloaded small caps. As the purchases tapered this month, the CSI 300 Index has held its gains from February while momentum continued for the growth-oriented ChiNext Index.

The data may help investors who have been trying to work out the extent of the rebound without help from state funds. GQG Partners LLC’s Sudarshan Murthy said earlier that the intervention has led to a confusing environmentand impacted price discovery.

Still, the purchases this time were just around 20% of the funds deployed during the 2015 market meltdown, when analysts estimates then ranged from 1.3 trillion yuan ($181 billion) to 1.5 trillion yuan. Back then, the national team’s favored method was to buy individual stocks directly.

Read More: China’s National Team Bought $57 Billion of Shares, UBS Says

State funds this time mostly snapped up products tied to the CSI 300 over the past few months, leading with purchases into the Huatai-Pinebridge CSI 300 ETF, which accounted for 15% of the spending, followed by three other products tracking the index. 

Funds linked to small caps, such as the China CSI 500 ETF and the E Fund ChiNext Price Index ETF, were also favorites among the 29 products that received national team inflows and helped stem the rout, BI data showed.

When Stocks Crash, China Turns to Its ‘National Team’: QuickTake

--With assistance from Jack Wang.

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