By Gregor Stuart Hunter 

HONG KONG--Global investors flocked to buy Chinese companies on the first day of a new trading link that opened the Shanghai market to international capital, filling the daily $2.1 billion quota by early afternoon.

Trading went on without a glitch after gongs rang at the Shanghai Stock Exchange and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Mainland Chinese investors were less interested in buying shares listed in Hong Kong, with only 17% of the $1.7 billion quota filled at the end of the trading day.

Traders bet on well-known Chinese brands that were inaccessible to foreign investors and stand to benefit from the rise in consumer spending in China. Among the best performers were Kweichow Moutai Co. Ltd., the maker of the popular Chinese liquor, auto maker SAIC Motor Corp. and milk company Inner Mongolia Yili Industrial Group Co., whose shares were the first to trade.

Called the Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect, the plan opens up 568 Chinese companies worth $2 trillion to foreign investors who can buy them via Hong Kong. Until now, institutional investors needed government approval to trade Chinese stocks.

The program had been in the works for months, but launched with just a week's notice at a time of tension between Beijing and Hong Kong, which has its own legal system and has long been used by China as an avenue to open up its financial system.

Just blocks from the confetti-filled opening ceremony where the city's chief executive, Leung Chun-ying, exchanged Champagne toasts with stock exchange officials, student protesters were camped out on one of the city's main streets.

There had been speculation in Hong Kong that Beijing was holding off approving the trading deal because of the protests. But the plan was announced last Monday after Chinese leader Xi Jinping met Mr. Leung and reiterated his support for his efforts to end the protests.

The program "is a new opportunity to invest, a new partnership model and is really the beginning of a new era" for Hong Kong's relationship with the mainland, said Charles Li, chief executive of Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Ltd.

Brokers said trading had proceeded smoothly--easing fears that they would struggle to fill a large quantity of orders.

"All hands were on deck waiting for the worst to happen, which didn't," said David Friedland, Asia Pacific managing director at Interactive Brokers. "Things went smoothly at our end."

The only surprise of the day was the lack of interest in stocks listed in Hong Kong from wealthy mainland Chinese investors, who took up just a fraction of their daily trading quota. "The benefit for the Hong Kong stock market is just not significant," said Paul Chan, chief investment officer for Asia ex-Japan at Invesco Ltd, which manages assets of $790.3 billion and didn't make use of the scheme today. The sum invested via the Stock Connect was "a drop in the bucket for daily turnover, and this was the first day," he added.

Many institutional investors opted to stay back from the launch until initial teething issues were resolved. Fund managers including Invesco, Baring Asset Management and Mirae Asset Global Investments said they planned to sit out Monday's launch. Mr. Chan said Invesco didn't trade on Monday because it couldn't prepare the fund to trade in just a week, though he expects to participate later.

Under the plan, global investors can buy a total of $49 billion worth of Chinese stocks. If investors fill the daily quota every day, the cap will be hit by mid-December. Investors widely expect the total to eventually be increased because China wants to bring in professional investors to the market, which is dominated by day traders and has been one of the world's worst performers in recent years.

Mainland Chinese investors are allowed to buy a total of $40.8 billion of Hong Kong shares with a cap of $1.7 billion a day. They didn't show much enthusiasm for Hong Kong stocks in part because most companies trading there are Chinese and already trade in Shanghai, and also because many already had access to the market through unofficial channels, industry officials said.

Asked about the relatively muted gains of the first day of trade, Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing's Mr. Li said the program was "a massive bridge" that will be in place for decades and investors shouldn't read too much into the first day of trading.

"At this point, safety and smooth travel is much more important than how many cars have actually crossed the bridge," he said.

Global investors ate up half of the Shanghai quota in premarket trading Monday and the rest of the available shares were sold by 1:57 p.m., which triggered a halt to purchases.

The enthusiasm for the new stock link didn't carry over to the markets overall. The Hang Seng Index fell 1.2% to 23,797.08 and the Hang Seng China Enterprises Index, a gauge of mainland listed companies which trade in Hong Kong, fell 1.9% to 10,554.30.

Shares of Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing, the operator of the city's stock market, were the worst-performers, down 4.5% to HK$178.10, as trading volumes failed to register any significant increase from the scheme.

The Shanghai Composite fell 0.2% to 2,474.01, with early gains for the market reversing after the quota was used up. Many of the shares that rose the most in Shanghai were midsize companies, so they wouldn't have much of an impact on the overall index. Trading contributed by global investors participating in Stock Connect accounted for 6.1% of the day's total traded value.

Small investors also largely stayed on the sidelines as well on Monday. Day-trading brokerages in Hong Kong and Shanghai had normal crowds and many people present said they needed to learn more about the system before investing.

Regular traders at a large branch of Haitong Securities located on a tree-lined street in downtown Shanghai said they were only dipping their toes into the market on the first day. The Stock Connect "is more significant for foreign investors," said day-trader Pan Yiyun, from the VIP trading room at Haitong. He said his goal was to gauge the commission fees and currency-exchange costs on the program and compare them to the fees in Hong Kong, where he also has a brokerage account.

Jacky Wong and Amy Li contributed to this article.

Write to Gregor Stuart Hunter at gregor.hunter@wsj.com

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