Depending on which weeks you choose, this year Asian tech IPOs have either performed extremely well or resoundingly badly.
For every Alibaba, which rose 38% on its New York debut in September, there was a MOL Global, tanking 35% in its opening day on Nasdaq.
While staunch defenders of the Asia tech story can point safely towards JD.com, which had to zero one third of investors because of a 15x subscribed order book in May, detractors can also look at Cheetah Mobile, forced to cut its IPO by a third just two weeks earlier.
The generally high level of interest in Asian tech IPOs means investors clearly see a lot of value in these companies. But they also seem to suffer from a lack of conviction, freaking out at every opportunity.
Just look at the rollercoaster secondary market performance of Jumei International Holding, one of the clearest examples of this phenomenon. The online fashion mall priced its $244m New York IPO at $22 on May 15 and soon found itself trading as much as 28.5% higher on its debut a day later.
It went above the $30 mark on June 10, but found almost all of its gains erased by the subsequent week. Then came a rebound, to as high as $38 on August 15, before another loss of steam, to close on October 13 at $23.90.
It seems that with every piece of bad data or news, even if utterly unrelated, Asian tech stocks are the first thing to be discarded. Likewise, when the news is good, investors pile back in.
So far, so predictable, perhaps. But this irrational behaviour is now hurting the pipeline for Asian tech IPOs, making it mighty tough for bankers to figure out when to launch deals and where to price them. The IPO of MOL shows what can happen when markets turn against the sector.
When that deal launched at the end of September, bankers were expecting a rousing reception for the e-payment firm. It was the first Malaysian listing in the US and was operating in a sector that investors favoured. But two weeks later, when it listed, the shares tumbled as investors reacted to bad news - about Europe, of all things.
The traditional excuse in such situations is the flightly nature of retail accounts, happy to jump on a bandwagon only to leap off just as quickly. But in this case the deal’s bookrunners say it was the long-onlys that were dumping the stock on day one.
Sure, Asian technology stocks are a bigger gamble than the Apples and Microsofts of this world. But that’s no reason to run for the hills every time there is a piece of bad economic news anywhere in the world.
That's because now there is something that used to be lacking: diversity. The Asia tech space has certainly got big enough for investors to pick the stocks they like and steer clear of the ones they don’t.
If they don't get to grips with that, it could be game over for new buying opportunities in the sector. A rising tide may lift all boats, but a falling one does the opposite just as effectively.