At 10 AM, Dr. Cooper, who never browsed Weibo, was unusually focused on someone's Weibo homepage on his computer.
With another gentle refresh, the Weibo message appeared as expected. Dr. Cooper's face immediately showed a hint of a smile, then he nodded to his secretary. The entire Goldman Sachs team began to act, throwing out the vast amount of subprime mortgage-related assets they held, becoming the first institution to successfully escape.
As for whether others could escape, it had nothing to do with Goldman Sachs. As long as they could escape, that was enough.
According to Dr. Cooper's original plan, he would have at least an hour to escape. Therefore, it was impossible for everyone to escape, but as long as a majority escaped, it would be a great victory. All the blame would be placed on that foolish so-called Black financial god. Let him ascend to immortality; all he needed was to get all the funds out.
Goldman Sachs Group acted quickly. Large amounts of assets were immediately listed for sale. Because the price was 5% lower than the normal price, the order was quickly taken. Billions of dollars were instantly recovered, which made Dr. Cooper smile with satisfaction.
The vast majority of these billions were from retail investors, and a portion was from institutions that were trying to maintain market price stability. It was estimated that those institutions whose money was swallowed would be furious and trembling when they learned the truth.
But who would care about such a thing?
"Continue, sell all our assets. Eat all buy orders within a 20% price difference in one go, and we'll be able to escape with two hundred billion dollars!" Dr. Cooper commanded in the trading room, his eyes bloodshot.
When trading in the stock market, many people or institutions would choose to place buy or sell orders, allowing them to escape or buy in immediately.
For example, if a stock price is currently $10, this price might not satisfy many sellers; their psychological price is $12. So, some sellers would list their stocks at $12 on the trading market. If someone was willing to buy their stock at this price, the transaction would be automatically completed, even if the seller was not online at the time.
Similarly, some buyers might want to buy stocks at a lower price, so they might place buy orders at $8. When large amounts of capital want to enter the market, they will often buy all orders from $10 to $12, starting from the lowest price. This way, the stock price rises from the current $10 to $12.
Conversely, it would fall from $10 to $8.
Generally, these orders would fluctuate within a price range of about 20% above and below the current stock price, and the number of these orders would usually be quite large, usually equivalent to about 1% of the stock's total issued share capital.
Large investment banks like Goldman Sachs generally do not invest heavily in any single stock but spread their funds across many different stocks. The main purpose of this is to avoid the impact of any stock's sharp rise or fall on their own funds.
There is another important purpose, which is to be able to escape quickly when it's time to flee.
For example, the nearly $460 billion in funds that Goldman Sachs Group was stuck with was used to purchase over a thousand stocks related to subprime mortgages. On average, each stock had about $400 million invested, which was about 1% of its value. As long as they were willing to incur a 20% loss and buy all orders within the 20% range, Goldman Sachs could successfully extricate itself.
Although this would result in a loss of about 20% of the funds, it was much better than the complete outbreak of the subprime mortgage crisis, where more than 80% of the funds would be trapped inside and unable to escape.
The speed of this entire operation would be very fast, possibly completed in less than a minute. Therefore, there might still be tens of billions of dollars that could not be successfully withdrawn, but it was no longer important; these were bearable... Dr. Cooper thought so happily for a long time, and then found that the atmosphere in the entire trading room was extremely silent. Apart from the sporadic "tick" sound of successful trades, Dr. Cooper did not hear the sound of frequent successful trades.
Dr. Cooper subconsciously glanced at the data on the big screen and found that out of the more than $460 billion he had ordered to sweep, only less than $30 billion had escaped. The remaining $430 billion was still on the books, with no movement.
"What are you doing? Why aren't you escaping?" Dr. Cooper's expression contorted on the spot. In the completely sealed trading room, he roared angrily. He didn't understand why these damned traders weren't escaping according to his perfectly devised plan!
But even worse, despite Dr. Cooper's anger, the funds on the big screen still showed no movement; they were not being processed.
On the contrary, those pending orders were already being consumed by other funds, as if someone had already reacted.
"Sell! Why aren't you selling!" Dr. Cooper felt his head starting to swell, but in the entire trading room, apart from the constant sound of keyboards being typed, everyone was trembling.
Finally, one trader couldn't help but stand up and say, "Sir, it's not that we are not executing your orders, but your orders cannot be executed."
"Impossible!" Dr. Cooper shouted. "There are so many buy orders still pending in the market. You just need to take the orders off and sell them. How can they not be executed?"
"Sir... it really cannot be traded. Although our backend database shows these stocks and assets, the system prompts us that these stocks and securities have been locked and are in a non-tradable state. We cannot control these stocks at all! We are now trying other assets to see if we can find other stocks and securities that can be sold!" said the trader.
"How is this possible? Our stocks and securities are in our accounts, how can they not be sold? And the system prohibits trading. This is impossible, unless... unless..." Dr. Cooper's eyes were about to pop out of his head. He immediately ordered, "Access the exchange through our system, directly use the exchange's official software to check our accounts!"
"But sir, this is not in accordance with company regulations. This could lead to our trading data being cracked..."
"This is my order, execute it immediately! Otherwise, you're fired!" Dr. Cooper roared. The trading room staff began to operate according to Dr. Cooper's instructions. At the same time, a trader cautiously said, "Sir, according to company regulations, no software not licensed by the company is allowed to be installed on the computers."
"Especially computers in the trading hall. Only the trading software developed by the company can be installed, so the exchange's official trading software is not installed on the computers. We need to download it immediately!"
"Then download it. Don't tell me my lightning-fast fiber optic cable in America needs more than a minute to download this darn software?"
"No, sir, the download is very fast, less than 10 seconds. But this action is blocked by the company's internal network. Our computers can only open software licensed by the company, and all other network activities are unusable."
"You need to call the technical department and ask them to remove the internal network search restrictions, otherwise we can't even open the official website of the securities exchange!" the trader whispered.
"..." Dr. Cooper listened, his head felt like it was about to explode. At this moment, he really wanted to shoot the person who set these complex rules, but he also knew that it was utterly meaningless. So, he could only issue an order to the technical department to lift the blockade.
He thought the blockade would be lifted quickly, but after waiting and waiting, there was still no movement. After a full half hour, the agitated Dr. Cooper personally went to the technical department, only to find that only a few bewildered newcomers were left in the technical department. The head of the technical department had actually disappeared.
"Where are they?" Dr. Cooper grabbed the few newcomers in the technical department and questioned them.
"Boss, the supervisor hasn't come in since this morning. We've been desperately calling him. Without his authorization and key, we don't have the authority to open these locks!" the newcomers said, trembling.
"Hiss!" Dr. Cooper gasped, then took his people and left the company, rushing into a Starbucks near the company to find a young man using a laptop.
"Give me your laptop!" Dr. Cooper said.
"Who are you! Are you trying to rob me? This is Wall Street, are you crazy?" the young man said, holding onto his computer tightly.
"I can give you $2,000. Give me your computer!" Dr. Cooper threw out a large wad of cash. The young man took the money without hesitation and left the computer for Dr. Cooper.
Dr. Cooper glanced at the desktop. Fortunately, this young man was also involved in finance, so the computer happened to have the official software launched by the trading center installed.
Dr. Cooper opened the software and entered several accounts controlled by Goldman Sachs. These were normally confidential accounts, but now they were logged into the New York Stock Exchange on an ordinary laptop over a Starbucks network.
Then Dr. Cooper saw the current status of these accounts.
The good news was that the assets, stocks, and securities in the accounts were all still there, not a single one missing.
But the bad news was that all these assets were currently in a locked trading state, which was why the traders were unable to trade.
Goldman Sachs Group's nearly $400 billion in assets related to subprime mortgages could not be moved, not even a single cent.