Imagethief was nonplussed to read in yesterday's International Herald Tribune that the Shanghai stock index has "burst through the psychologically important 4,000 level". Imagethief would like to congratulate everyone involved, including all the small-time punters who, each in their tiny way, has contributed to this momentous achievement. I would also like to offer the follow entirely unsolicited investment advice:

Sell you morons! Sell everything! Get out! Get out while you can, for god's sake!

I am, of course, aware that no one at all will listen to me. And perhaps it's just as well. My own investment history is abysmal. I worked in two promising Internet startups and failed to get even a little rich. (Well, I was briefly rich on paper. As one of my friends said, "I've never known a millionaire before." Turns out he still hasn't known one.) I owned a bunch of technology stocks in the late nineties and sold them out at a very modest gain before the bottom dropped out. Scared silly by that to this day, I keep my money under the mattress like a paranoid grandmother. Mrs. Imagethief handles all the actual investing in the family, calmly and competently. Even if I tried I would probably just blow the whole wad on Chinese melamine futures.

There is a lot to love in this article. First, the gyrations from analysts:

"Given that the liquidity's there, the momentum's there, the profit news is there, you're looking at 5,000 within a month or two," said Stephen Green, a Standard Chartered Bank economist. However, he added a government intervention could block that rise.

Second, the top sign of a bubble. Everyone's jumping into the pool:

A growing number of Chinese, meanwhile, are pulling their money out of saving accounts and sinking it into the stock market. Investors opened 4.79 million new A-share accounts in April, compared with 3.08 million for the whole of 2006, the state-run Shanghai Securities News reported Wednesday.

With little investment knowledge, such newcomers are particularly vulnerable to fluctuations in the market.

Yep. And they'll be a sore and angry lot when great casino in the sky fails to payout and those savings accounts have nothing but a row of goose-eggs. They'll wonder why the government didn't warn them. They'll rediscover their Marxist roots and rage against the evils of capitalism. They'll hurl themselves from the awkward square hole at the top of the (uncompleted) World Financial Center. Let's hope that Chinese brokerages don't allow margin trading you'll really have the ingredients of some unrest when stock-picking soft drink loses it's fizz.

Not to be a pessimist or anything, but, honestly, this is bomb with a burning fuse. Stand back when it goes off.

Of course, as previously stated, I suck at this game, and free advice is, in any case, worth what you pay for it.

Disclosure: Imagethief owns no shares traded on the Shanghai Stock Exchange and wouldn't buy one even if you tucked the certificate into Jessica Alba's cleavage and threw her in on the deal. But, then, Imagethief ain't rich either. Maybe you should follow Warren Buffet's advice instead.