At the start of last year, Chinese stocks were cheap and only 200 were valued highly enough — had they been American — to have qualified for the blue-chip S&P 500 index. Today, Chinese stocks are (very) expensive, and 482 are worth more than the smallest US blue-chip.
Among them is Beijing Baofeng Technology, which has produced perhaps the wackiest share price performance in history. In 33 trading days since its float in Shenzhen, it has risen by the daily maximum on 32 of them, for a 2,827 per cent gain on no news.
In the process, Baofeng has gone from a sub-$200m small cap to a valuation of more than $4bn, equivalent to America’s 494th-placed company and almost as large as US Steel. It makes a video player, and, at least last year, not much money: it is valued at 494 times last year’s earnings.