The number of new accounts opened on China's A-share market has plunged to its lowest level since May, pointing to greater caution among investors towards a sluggish stock market, the Shanghai Securities News reported on Thursday.

On Tuesday, just 9,881 new accounts were opened and the newspaper predicted the total number of new accounts this month to be halved from that in May.

Only 236,000 accounts have been newly opened so far this month, compared with 440,000 in May when the composite index was surging. Frequent initial public offerings (IPOs) were blamed by some analysts for the index stagnation in June and July.

China resumed IPOs last month following a year-long suspension. Five mainland companies launched their IPOs on the two Chinese bourses in one week. The number of IPOs caused a shortage of money supply in the stock market and some investors have begun to worry about its prospects.

The markets saw bullish performance for the first five months of this year as the major index grew by 42 percent.

However, this dropped by about five percent on June 7 and again on July 13 with prices of nearly 300 of the 1,400 shares down by the daily maximum of 10 percent. Concerns about possible interest rate hikes and the massive IPOs prompted some investors to dump shares to secure their profits.

Source: Xinhua