One of the occupational hazards of working for a paper such as the Financial Times is that you get asked a lot for stock tips – especially in a country such as China where meal-time conversations for the past two years almost always come round to the booming stock market.

I can remember a lunch at the start of the year when some Chinese friends asked me what they should do. The market had already risen 150 per cent in 12 months, so I suggested that maybe this might be a good time to take some profits.