Sold out of China

I'm now out of China. Actually that was a couple of weeks ago but since it seems to have been a reasonable move I'm now prepared to write about it! It's been a great couple of years and although I still believe the long term story, valuations seem to have got way out of hand. I've decided a good indicator of market top is when I hear of a really crazy IPO story. In the case of the Dot com boom it was Lastminute.com whilst Blackstone signalled the top of the private equity market. So when I read of an IPO called Alibaba (maybe a clue there in the name) which multiplied 3 times on the first day of dealings to a PE of 306 I couldn't wait to get out. Now a couple of weeks on with the market about 20% off it's peak, the IPO of Sinotruk (which had been 300 times oversubscribed) fell 15% on the first day of dealings.