I have already done the utmost, it's time to beat a hasty retreat and enjoy life! After the market closed in the morning, Yang Zhiyuan lay on a waterbed, enjoying the services of two beautiful women, one black and one white, by his side, sighing with emotion.
Yang Zhiyuan had already begun to consider exiting. The main reason was still Huang He. Historically, Yang Zhiyuan would have had several more years before giving up his Yahoo shares and starting to enjoy life.
However, this idea had been brought forward because he saw news about Huang He in Europe.
When he saw Huang He spend a billion US dollars to curiously buy a former French royal palace and become boyfriends with three European princesses, and rumor had it that the four of them played a "one dragon and three phoenixes" game, Yang Zhiyuan was filled with jealousy.
Although the black and white beauties by Yang Zhiyuan's side were also exceptionally stunning, they were just ordinary girls. How could they compare to the excitement of having three princesses? Yang Zhiyuan felt immense envy just thinking about it.
Therefore, Yang Zhiyuan decided to beat a hasty retreat. He would sell half of his Yahoo stock, then resign completely, or only manage Yahoo China's business, leaving him with plenty of time to enjoy life.
Of course, another major reason was that Yang Zhiyuan had actually found some problems with Yahoo. However, Yahoo commissioned a survey company to conduct a detailed market survey every three months, and the market survey report for this month had not yet been released. Yang Zhiyuan himself was not sure of Yahoo's actual market share. Based on some traffic data he had access to, it appeared that Yahoo's traffic had slightly decreased with Google's independence.
This was a normal situation, but the traffic data in the backend had been declining for a month, which seemed a bit unusual. Yang Zhiyuan had keenly sensed a problem.
"I'm afraid Google has a significant advantage in the search engine field, and some traffic will be taken away!" Yang Zhiyuan speculated. Thus, he also guessed that when the next market report came out, Yahoo's data might not be as good as expected, and the stock price might fall. Therefore, withdrawing when Yahoo's market capitalization was at its peak of $150 billion was the best choice.
The Yahoo board of directors naturally welcomed Yang Zhiyuan's withdrawal with open arms. This would allow Yang Zhiyuan's shares to be absorbed into the stock market, making it easier for them to control Yahoo. Currently, shareholders were constantly thinking about how to get their own people into the presidential position to gain benefits.
Therefore, Yang Zhiyuan's retirement was a foregone conclusion. He was now focused on selling his shares through the stock market.
"I'll sell if it exceeds $15 per share of the total market value," Yang Zhiyuan muttered, looking at the current share price of $14.8.
Yahoo's total share capital was 10 billion shares, so the current share price was $15 per share.
Yang Zhiyuan had originally decided to leave a few days ago, but he felt it would be more profitable to sell only after the price rose above $15 per share. However, yesterday, due to short-selling by Western Mustang Company, the stock price had fallen to around $14.2 per share. Yang Zhiyuan was naturally unwilling to sell at this price.
Fortunately, Yahoo's growth had been astonishing, and this morning the price had returned to $14.98 per share, just shy of $15. Yang Zhiyuan had already set his stock to be sold at $15 per share, waiting for buyers in the stock market.
In the afternoon, as the US stock market opened, Yang Zhiyuan swirled his wine glass, intending to witness Yahoo's shares returning to $15 per share.
Then the stock price fell to $14.8.
"This is a normal volatile adjustment; it will soon return to the upward curve!" Yang Zhiyuan convinced himself, and then he saw Yahoo's stock price drop to $14.7.
Then it was $14.52, and then it directly dropped to $14.4. In a short period, nearly $6 billion in market value had disappeared.
"What happened?" Yang Zhiyuan stood up, finding it increasingly difficult to maintain his initial composure. "Could someone else be shorting Yahoo?"
Yang Zhiyuan immediately found the person in charge of the company's finance department, whose expression was also somewhat grim.
"Is it Western Mustang shorting us?" Yang Zhiyuan asked directly.
"Yes and no..." the other person said cautiously.
"What does that mean?" Yang Zhiyuan asked irritably.
"In a short period, there was indeed a large number of Yahoo shares sold, and it was definitely short selling, which caused our stock price to fall significantly. However, the source of these shares came from more than a dozen different institutions, and they were not related to Western Mustang's funds. In fact, Western Mustang's funds have all been spent, and they couldn't possibly have the money to short us anymore!" the other person replied.
"Then why? Why would more than a dozen institutions short us? This is unscientific!" Yang Zhiyuan asked anxiously.
"I'm not sure..." his subordinate lowered his head. Yang Zhiyuan, helpless, told him to leave.
Yang Zhiyuan, of course, did not know that this was actually the result of the Google press conference held at noon.
Because the Google press conference only attracted a small number of reporters, the news did not spread widely. These reporters also discovered a business opportunity, which was to sell this news to some institutions as soon as possible.
As a result, only institutions that had a good relationship with these few reporters learned the news first. Then, before the news broke out, they sold their Yahoo shares as soon as possible.
At the same time, these institutions specifically instructed the reporters not to sell the news to other institutions, otherwise it would affect their escape.
These reporters generally received rewards of hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars from the institutions, achieving a life reversal.
"Fine, perhaps this is the aftermath of short selling; the stock price may fluctuate for a while longer!" Yang Zhiyuan continued to comfort himself, then pondered whether he should quickly sell his shares.
If he sold now, it should still be in time, but Yang Zhiyuan was somewhat unwilling. He could have sold at $15 per share, but now he could only sell at $14.4 per share.
It was important to note that Yang Zhiyuan held 10% of Yahoo's stock. He planned to sell half of it, which was 5%, or a full 5 billion shares of Yahoo stock.
If he sold at $14.4, he might lose $300 million in profit, which Yang Zhiyuan was reluctant to do.
"Fine, I have too many shares, and it's impossible to sell them all in a short period. It will take several months to slowly divest. I'll wait a bit longer!" Yang Zhiyuan finally made a decision.
It wasn't that Yang Zhiyuan couldn't sell all at once; after all, Western Mustang Company had done that before. However, doing so would mean shorting stocks worth $15 billion, and Yahoo's stock might bring Yang Zhiyuan himself down. He was somewhat unwilling.
Thinking of this, Yang Zhiyuan decided to go relax again. He decided not to look at the stock market today to avoid feeling upset.
Yang Zhiyuan did not know that as Yahoo's stock price fell, many institutions holding Yahoo stock in the market began to feel something was wrong.
Therefore, these institutions began to actively investigate Yahoo's situation. Once institutions started actively investigating, the prospectus that Google had specifically held a press conference to release would definitely not escape the eyes of the institutions.
Thus, the institutions learned the contents of the prospectus.
"Damn it, they kept such important information from us, those bastards!" Upon learning the truth, the institutions cursed those institutions that had rushed to escape and frantically sold their shares, fearing that they would be trapped in this pit if they were any slower.
As a result, while Yang Zhiyuan was relaxing, Yahoo's stock price plummeted at an unimaginable speed. By the time the market closed in the afternoon, and Yang Zhiyuan returned from his relaxation, he was stunned when he looked at his company's stock price.
$12.37.
In just over an hour, the stock price had fallen from $14.4 to $12.37. The stock price that Yahoo had taken half a year to increase had plummeted in one afternoon.
"What on earth happened?" Yang Zhiyuan was completely stunned and shouted frantically. At this time, most stock investors were in the same situation. They didn't understand what had happened to Yahoo and why the stock price had dropped by nearly three dollars in one afternoon. After all, Yahoo's trend had been upward that morning, and it had collapsed in one afternoon.
However, the answer was soon revealed, as Google officially posted its prospectus on Nasdaq and its official website at 4 PM that day.
Although not many people saw the prospectus immediately, every investor who finished reading it was stunned, especially those who had bought Yahoo stock but had not yet had time to sell it. They were all trembling with fear and wished they could delete the prospectus immediately and sell their shares at lightning speed the next day.
However, more people who had nothing to do with Yahoo saw the prospectus and, with a schadenfreude attitude, spread the news extensively online.
The first platform to launch this was Weibo.
With the support of immense capital and a market that was essentially blank, Weibo had established branch stations in almost all universities across the United States within a month. Using the previous strategy, they created a campus beauty and campus hunk ranking to attract popularity from various schools.
Once these students, who were the most active in social circles, became Weibo users, Weibo spread across the entire internet at an unimaginable speed.
After two months, Weibo had 3 million registered users and 1 million active users in the entire United States. This was already a very large user base, and this number continued to grow.
Because Weibo had reached a strategic cooperation agreement with Google, brokered by Versailles, Weibo and Google exchanged shares. Weibo used 10% of its own shares to obtain 5% of Google's shares, forming a very close alliance between the two companies.
One of the only three fixed advertising spaces on Google's homepage was given to Weibo, which was the best proof.
Similarly, Weibo also listed Google on its homepage. As official search partners, both companies tried their best to direct traffic to each other, forming a perfect resource complementarity.
Therefore, Weibo's development speed in the United States was extremely fast, and it had already gained a dominant market position among young people.
So when a Weibo user named "I am your uncle" posted the full text of Google's prospectus on Weibo and asserted that Yahoo was finished, it immediately climbed to the top of Weibo's trending topics list and was prominently displayed on Weibo's homepage. In less than an hour, almost all Weibo netizens knew that Yahoo's market share had been completely swallowed up by Google.