Good returns are as much about avoiding mistakes as picking winners. Holders of Chinese property stocks know this better than most. Slumping volumes and prices on the mainland have decimated the sector. Shares of Hong Kong-listed Chinese property developers that remain in the black this year can be counted on one hand.

Agile Property now trails the leader board by some distance, having halved this year. Late on Friday, the company announced that chairman and founder Chen Zhou Lin had been detained on the mainland as early as 10 days previously. There is little other information; the arrest may have nothing to do with the business. That the stock closed down 17 per cent shows how jumpy investors are.

Alongside the chairman’s detention on Friday, the company announced a cancellation of a rights issue declared last month. Agile was the latest in a series of property companies looking for new capital. With a net debt to equity ratio of 100 per cent, it is not the worst capitalised of its peers, but it is not far off. As the stock collapsed, the price of the company’s thinly traded 2017 bonds fell from HK$98 to HK$87 in price; they now yield 17 per cent.