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Comment by dak1 | Hacker News Reader

Just how undervalued could it be with a market cap of 13.37 billion yuan ($2.15 billion)? And it appears to have been going up 10% daily since March 27 when it launched (it's up over 1000% already).

And if it was so incredibly underpriced... why was it so underpriced?

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Because the IPO prices in China are heavily regulated. Tech companies often raise little money in an IPO because it will always be significantly underpriced (generally 100%-300%).

The authorities will make sure your IPO is oversubscribed by at least 50 times to protect the investors, or they will not approve the IPO.

Weird considering the rationale they gave for approving this last batch of IPO's: "a move which could cool a stock market rally that has seen the benchmark blue-chip index surge 13 percent since the start of this year."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/03/us-china-ipo-idUSK...

Not contradictory at all. Because IPO is such a lucrative investment, each round of IPOs can draw as much as several trillion CNY. This amount of money would have to be withdrawn from the stock market to "cool it down".

If the profit is guaranteed (which it seems like, with the government restrictions), investment firms should be able to simply borrow the money to buy the newly issued shares.

Yes, and it's exactly what's happening. There's no market inefficiency here. During the few days when IPOs are available, the overnight interbank interest rates usually increase significantly compared to other days. On average you can expect to make about 10% p.a. almost-risk-free from IPOs, similar to gearing A-grade corporate bonds.

Who is buying it, by the way? What is the probable source of their money?

Anyone and everyone. Real estate investment has bottomed out, now Chinese cash is being funneled into the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.

Lots of free money flowing around in China, they're sniffing in the US too. Investment in Chinese tech companies is booming at a rate that dwarfs the dot-com bubble.

There is currently a margin (leverage) bubble in China. It will not end pretty.

the 500B-USD$ question is "When will it pop?"

From http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-07/u-s-dot-co...

The use of margin debt to trade mainland shares has climbed to all-time highs, while investors are opening stock accounts at a record pace. More than two-thirds of new investors have never attended or graduated from high school, according to a survey by China’s Southwestern University of Finance and Economics.

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