Silly Season for China Stocks

So PetroChina made its domestic debut today and according to Bloomberg , China’s biggest oil and gas company is now valued at double what Exxon Mobil trades for, becoming the first company in the world to be worth more than a trillion dollars, or more than the GDP of Russia, which has some oil and gas itself. That’s because at around 40 yuan a share, its price/earning ratio is roughly 60, compared to a more rational 13 times that Exxon trades at on the New York Stock Exchange. It’s telling that the company’s share that is listed in Hong Kong is trading at less than half the China valuation and actually fell today. As ever with China’s market, everybody knows it’s wildly overvalued and that it will eventually deflate. But nobody knows when. The higher it goes, though, the harder it will fall. Could be ugly.