An analyst building a credit committee deck this weekend has three Hong Kong figures to choose from, and a committee member who will ask where the number came from.

The first is US$47.5 billion, the record Hong Kong share sales in the third quarter, "despite sell-off" in the wire headlines. The second is HK$388 billion, the nine-month IPO haul that Financial Secretary Paul Chan says has more than doubled, per the South China Morning Post. The third is US$92 billion, a record for Hong Kong IPO fundraising, per BusinessToday, which also credits the AI frenzy.

Convert the second at the peg of 7.8 (a rate that has not moved in decades, so nobody can blame the currency) and HK$388 billion is about US$50 billion. One quarter is nearly the whole nine months. And the nine months is about half of the US$92 billion.

So the three figures cannot be the same count. The Q3 headlines say "share sales", which usually takes in placings and follow-on offerings. The Chan figure says IPO. The US$92 billion headline says fundraising, and the reports do not say over what period. None of the three states what it includes.

The first person to feel that is whoever has to defend the slide. A deck that cites the US$92 billion beside the HK$388 billion invites the question of why a record is twice the year to date. A deck that sets US$47.5 billion beside HK$388 billion invites the follow-up of what happened in the first half.

The definitions sit with the people who compile the figures: HKEX's market statistics, the SFC, and the data vendors. Until their next release lines the totals up, the deck that carries the wrong one into a credit committee has to explain a discrepancy that the original reports created.