Forget animal print, the gyrations in luxury valuations have been the wildest look of the past year.

Ever since LVMH founder and Chief Executive Officer Bernard Arnault reassured investors in January that the industry wasn’t experiencing a severe slump but rather a gradual deceleration, stocks have rebounded. But with the US luxury market still to recover and Chinese consumers yet to travel to Europe in meaningful numbers, investors face a repeat of last year’s boom and bust — when share prices surged on expectations of Chinese demand, only to fall back sharply when this failed to materialize.