Chapter 193 Unknowingly, Disaster Arrives

In the study, he sipped the seafood porridge delivered by the nanny.

Su Yehao was checking his account activity when Zheng Yongwen contacted him again.

On the other end of the phone, Zheng Yongwen said with a smile:

"Last night I bought 710,000 shares of Nasdaq 100 ETF put options, totaling more than $280 million. I didn't expect to wake up this morning and find I'd made a small profit. What about you? My people told me there was a two-minute trading congestion last night, and the Nasdaq index stopped updating for more than twenty minutes. Trading was very busy. According to *The New York Times*, a mysterious large short order from Hong Kong collided with other short orders, causing investor panic. That large short order, was it yours?"

"...It's on the news? Wait a minute, I'm at the computer, let me search and see. I did establish a short position last night, with a total scale of more than six billion dollars. I was originally thinking of sending you a text message, but I was too sleepy and forgot. I fell asleep directly in the car on the way home."

While speaking, Su Yehao pulled the keyboard in front of him.

He searched for the keywords "New York Times" and the English words for "Nasdaq," and sure enough, he found some related news through the Google search engine.

With more and more media starting to pay attention to online news, finding information is much easier than it was two years ago.

Zheng Yongwen's voice continued, asking in surprise: "You built such a large short position in one night? Such frequent transactions, and the amount is so large, no wonder it caused market panic. Did you hedge it?"

Su Yehao told the truth:

"Not in one night, it was from twelve o'clock to one o'clock in the morning. Honestly, I still don't quite understand what the benefits of hedging are. If I only make a little bit, I might as well put the money in the bank and earn interest. My funds aren't all used to short the Nasdaq, I also shorted Amazon, America Online·Time Warner, Yahoo, and other companies. The trading congestion shouldn't have anything to do with me... right?"

The purpose of the mother order in hedging is to profit, while the hedging order ensures that when investors fall off the rope, they can land as smoothly as possible, avoiding the risk of single-line investment.

This method of operation has advantages and disadvantages, and if the decision is wrong, the losses can also be very large.

Although the second investment's profit can compensate for the loss when the mother order loses money, when the mother order is profitable, it means that the other investment is likely to be losing money.

With Su Yehao's personality, under the premise of being relatively confident, he certainly doesn't like the form that reduces risk but also often greatly reduces returns.

"It's hard to say how much it has to do with you, but since *The New York Times* specifically mentioned it was from Hong Kong, there must be an informant in the Nasdaq exchange. This news isn't just speculation. Perhaps when you were shorting, there were other large short orders appearing, causing a momentary panic in the market, and too many instructions caused the system to crash."

"..."

After hearing Zheng Yongwen's words, Su Yehao recalled what happened last night and realized that it seemed to be the case.

He had already seen the phrase "mysterious funds from Hong Kong" in the all-English news report. If he investigated the account ownership further, it was only a matter of time before they found him.

It would be one thing if he were just a pure speculator, but he is also a major shareholder of Yanwenzi Group and Google, among other companies. As a Silicon Valley tycoon, shorting the market is a bit of a disservice.

Once the news spreads, whether it's the shareholders of Yanwenzi Group or the investors of Google, they will probably have some misgivings and maybe cause some trouble.

Considering this, Su Yehao started to get a headache. He pinched his eyebrows and pondered before asking, "Yongwen, how likely do you think it is that the Nasdaq will keep my account a secret?"

"I don't know, I only know that there's no wall that doesn't leak, besides Nasdaq, securities firms, banks, and consulting companies could all leak information. You're just shorting, it's not illegal, are you worried about becoming famous?"

"Well, people are afraid of fame like pigs are afraid of getting fat, it's always good to plan ahead. My Yanwenzi Group fell 3.12% last night. What do you think investors will think if they know I led the market down?"

Hearing this, Zheng Yongwen said calmly: "You are you, the listed company is the listed company, there's no need to be afraid of this and that. They can't just say a few words and you'll stop investing, right?"

"Of course not, maybe I should let Yanwenzi Group and Google use their idle funds to buy some shorting private equity funds."

......

In their opinion, the market was only down slightly.

Although the trading congestion last night and the Nasdaq index stopping updating for more than twenty minutes seemed like a sign of investors losing confidence in the market prospects, the drop was small after all, and there was no reaction from the outside world.

So neither Su Yehao nor Zheng Yongwen took it seriously.

Even though Su Yehao woke up and made more than $150 million, he didn't dare to treat it as his own money. As long as the chips are still on the table, never be too happy too soon.

After hanging up the phone, Su Yehao continued to sit in front of the computer and search for his name.

Besides some news about investment failures, the most were various scandalous news stories. For example, when he went to New York a while ago, he saw British actress Catherine Zeta-Jones at a party, and ran into her at the hotel entrance when he was leaving. They just exchanged greetings, but the American paparazzi took a picture and sensationalized it.

In addition, Tianyu Entertainment has recently been preparing to film several TV series and movies in a row, which has led to Jiang Yu and Nangong Tian frequently appearing in the public eye, inevitably linking them to his name.

After a quick scan, he really looked like a confirmed playboy.

That night, the Nasdaq fell another 1.7%, and the market remained quiet.

Another day passed in the blink of an eye.

On Wednesday in the United States, the Nasdaq index fell further, with the decline narrowing to 1.1%. It rebounded 0.31% on Thursday, but fell sharply again by 3.82% on Friday.

Like boiling a frog in warm water, experts said it was a normal correction.

However, the Nasdaq has fallen 9% since the beginning of the week, and Su Yehao has not only recovered his losses from the previous month, but has also profited more than $400 million.

Hong Kong.

On Saturday morning, Su Yehao shook his legs, humming a song, and told Jiang Yu while eating shredded pork noodles with kidney:

"I've figured it out, the stock market crash has arrived so quietly. Those financial institutions are really trying hard to screw people over. I don't know how many retail investors they've attracted to take over their positions with the excuse of a short-term correction."

He thought that with the scale of the Nasdaq bubble, once it fell, it would come fiercely, causing a stock market halt or a single-day drop of more than 4% or 5%.

It fell slightly for three days, and even rebounded slightly on Thursday in the United States.

It wasn't until Friday that it fell sharply, with the intraday decline once exceeding 4.4%.

Amazon fell 4.2% in one day.

America Online·Time Warner Group fell as much as 4.45%, and Yanwenzi Group also fell 1.3%.

On Tuesday, Yanwenzi Group had already filed with the SEC, that is, the US Securities and Exchange Commission, to use $800 million in idle funds to purchase several private equity funds under Fidelity Fund, Goldman Sachs Group, and Morgan Stanley that were shorting the Nasdaq.

Su Yehao wasn't joking when he told Zheng Yongwen to use the idle money for investment.

At that time, he was ridiculed by several financial experts for using the money for investment instead of expanding market share, but he never expected the slap in the face to come so quickly.

Today, among the top 30 Internet companies with the highest market value on the Nasdaq, more than 80% have fallen by more than 3%, but Yanwenzi Group has only fallen by 1.8% at most during the day due to investment.

Anyway, he doesn't plan to privatize and delist, and there's no need to repurchase shares for the time being. Out of consideration for his own interests and the interests of the shareholders, Su Yehao certainly hopes to be able to stay out of trouble and stabilize the stock price of Yanwenzi Group.

He doesn't need to guess to know that those retail investors of Yanwenzi Group have already begun to praise Su Yehao's wisdom.

After all, everyone else is falling, and falling less is winning.

Other companies have suffered heavy losses, but Yanwenzi Group has hedged part of its losses through a bizarre fund investment. This operation is really unmatched...