JD.Com Inc Spikes On Heavy Volume, No News

JD.Com Inc. (NASDAQ: JD) shares spiked as much as 18 percent earlier Tuesday in heavy trading on little apparent news.

JD.Com recently changed hands at $25.22, up 8.5 percent on volume of more than 18 million shares. Average daily volume is 6.2 million shares.

The unexplained bump for the Beijing-based online direct sales company, whose business model is often compared with the far larger Alibaba Inc. (NYSE: BABA), came amid a 5 percent drop for China's Shanghai composite index Tuesday.

Chinese stocks fell after the Beijing government on Tuesday tightened credit rules and signaled it expects slower growth.

Short interest in JD.Com rose 20 percent in early last month to about 5.4 million of its 2.18 billion shares outstanding as of November 14.

JD.Com, with a market capitalization of $34.59 billion, last week completed a secondary offering in which three major shareholders sold $619 million in American depository shares at $23.80.

JD.Com, which completed a $2 billion initial public offering in May, didn't receive any proceeds from the recent stock sale.

Tencent Holdings (OTC: TCEHY) acquired an additional $150 million shares in last week's offering and now controls more than 17 percent of JD.Com's shares.

Tencent, with a market capitalization of $141 billion, traded recently down nearly 2 percent to $14.78 a share.