HONG KONG, Nov. 19 (Xinhua) -- Hong Kong shares Thursday fell for a third day, with the benchmark index moving down 0.86 percent, or 197.17 points at 22,643.16 due to overnight falls on the Wall Street.

Hang Seng Index opened up 0.24 percent, or 54.51 points at 22, 894.84, which was also the day's high, but was dragged lower by the Dow Jones Industrial Average's fall Wednesday on data showing a sharp decline in U.S. home construction. The index once reached as low as 22,587.18 during the day's session.

Turnover shrank to 69.28 billion HK dollars (about 8.95 billion U. S. dollars) from Wednesday's 76.69 billion HK dollars.

Analysts said they expect the index to consolidate further in the near term before resuming its uptrend, following Wednesday's nearly 16-month intraday high of 23,099.57.

China Enterprises Index dipped 217.03 points, or 1.59 percent, to close at 13,470.98 points.

Four major stock categories ended mixed. The commerce and industry sub-index was down 0.24 percent, the finance, 1.56 percent, while the utilities sub-index went up 0.35 percent, the property, 0.19 percent.

Bucking the trend, heavyweight China Mobile, the largest mobile carrier in China's mainland, advanced 1.71 percent to 77.45 HK dollars, while HSBC Holdings lost 0.98 percent to 95.55 HK dollars. Smaller rival China Unicom dropped 2.06 percent to 10.48 HK dollars.

Local property firms rose on positive news released by the government. Cheung Kong, the flagship of Hong Kong's richest man Li Ka-shing, rose 0.62 percent to 97.45 HK dollars. Henderson Land gained 0.46 percent at 55.05 HK dollars. SHK Properties moved up 0. 34 percent to 117.2 HK dollars.

Mainland-based commercial lenders dived. Bank of China fell 2. 07 percent at 4.73 HK dollars. ICBC dropped 2.42 percent to 6.85 HK dollars. CCB lost 2.45 percent to 7.16 HK dollars.

Energy shares were also losers. PetroChina fell 0.40 percent to10.08 HK dollars, off-shore oil producer CNOOC lost 1.41 percent to 12.56 HK dollars, Sinopec Corp edged down 0.73 percent to 6.84 HK dollars.

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