MINIMAX Round-Trips Its Policy Spike as the Lock-Up Clock Runs Down

The Policy Bid Got Rejected

The 24-hour move is a clean round-trip. On June 22, MiniMax's Hong Kong line (0100.HK) closed up 23.89% at HK$616.50, a policy-driven pop tied to the company's push toward a mainland STAR Market listing — MiniMax hired listing consultants on May 31 as Chinese AI firms scrambled to tap onshore capital. That was the bull case compressed into a single session. It lasted exactly one day: the shares slid again on June 23, back toward HK$515, and the HIP-3 perp tracked them straight down to $65.56.

The perp exaggerates both directions. With up to 10x leverage and only about $9.8M of 24h volume, the book is thin enough that MINIMAX printed a clear premium to the cash-implied price into the spike and has now handed all of it back. Nothing here required a new catalyst — buyers ran out, and the structural sellers underneath never left.

It Was Always a Supply Problem

Every bounce in this name keeps dying at the same wall: the unlock. MiniMax's cornerstone lock-up expires July 8, with the first batch of 107.4 million shares — 34.25% of total share capital, worth roughly RMB 11.7 billion — listing on July 9. Tradable float jumps from a sliver to nearly half the company, and much of that stock sits with pre-IPO and strategic holders who have every reason to take profit after a roughly 7x post-listing run.

That is why strength gets sold. Anyone front-running the unlock fades a +24% session rather than chasing it, which is exactly how a policy spike converts into a 23% giveback on a leveraged perp inside a day. The timing isn't subtle — MiniMax's own STAR Market listing push landed right as the lock-up clock started ticking, a tell that the company itself is racing to line up fresh capital before the supply hits the tape.

The Pair Trade Keeps Going the Wrong Way

Zoom out and the June 22 pop looks like noise inside a much larger unwind. MiniMax peaked above HK$1,238 in March, roughly 7.5x its January IPO price, then shed about 53% over the first two weeks of June as the AI-listing bubble deflated. By June 12 it had fallen 52.9% from its May 29 close to HK$396.

The fundamental backdrop hasn't helped. DeepSeek's V4 release and aggressive price cuts turned model pricing into a margin war that MiniMax — carrying roughly RMB 16 billion of losses over two years — is poorly positioned to win. And it keeps losing the China-AI pair trade: as of June 8, Zhipu was worth HK$585.8 billion against MiniMax's HK$159.3 billion, about 2.7x larger — a full reversal from January, when MiniMax listed at nearly double Zhipu's size. The policy bid gave bulls one day. The lock-up, the price war, and the valuation gap are the rest of the trade.