Why China Petroleum & Chemical Corp (SNPMF) is Skyrocketing in 2025?

We recently published a list of 10 Hottest Mega-Cap Stocks So Far in 2025. In this article, we are going to take a look at where China Petroleum & Chemical Corp (OTCMKTS:SNPMF) stands against other hottest mega-cap stocks so far in 2025.

Many mega-cap stocks have started 2025 with a bang and we’ll be taking a closer look into each of them to learn why they’ve performed so well already.

If you skim the trends in the past two years, it should be clear that it’s worthwhile to look into mega-cap stocks that have gained a lot already. Investors who defied the conventional wisdom and doubled down on the mega-cap stocks last year have outperformed the benchmark index by a wide margin.

We used a stock screener and sorted public companies — those tagged by the screener as trading in the U.S. — with a market capitalization above $100 billion by their year-to-date (YTD) gains.

Will lightning strike again this year and take these stocks even higher by the end of 2025? It’s not rational to paint all these companies with the same brush, so let’s dive into the nitty gritty of each mega-cap stock in this list.

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China Petroleum & Chemical Corp (SNPMF)

• YTD Total Return: 7.39%

China Petroleum & Chemical Corp, or Sinopec, (OTCMKTS:SNPMF) is the only Chinese company on this list. That said, you should be able to buy the stock in the U.S. through major brokerage firms.

SNPMF stock is still down 45% from its peak all the way back in 2014. It started bottoming out in 2020 and has been in a pretty stagnant long-term trajectory since then with some ups and downs. The reason it is up so much YTD is also because of a recovery from its decline from July to November last year.

Sinopec’s fate is linked almost entirely to China’s macroeconomics. The Chinese stock market has been lagging behind those in the West. Companies in China increased their production capabilities in the COVID stimulus era but by the time they were done with it, they’d been faced with lower export orders and a domestic population that hadn’t generated much demand either. Not only that, the Chinese government has also been conservative with stimulus. We’ve seen some stimulus efforts recently, but they are nowhere near what is needed to cause a sustained rebound in Chinese markets.

Overall, SNPMF ranks 6th on our list of hottest mega-cap stocks so far in 2025. While we acknowledge the potential of SNPMF as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter time frame.If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than SNPMF but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.

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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.