National Tide 1980.

27th floor of Toranomon Ryofu Building, Minato-ku, Tokyo.

During the pre-market trading session, Iwasawa, who had been entrusted with an important task by Harunori Takahashi, had already had his subordinates prepare.

They were on high alert, not only guarding the phone and turning on the market information display screen, but also turning on the television.

This uses satellite signals, so there is no issue with poor reception.

However, Iwasawa stared at the screen and searched through all the TV stations, but couldn't find a single news item that was unfavorable to EIE.

On the contrary, I saw two reports of my boss speaking confidently to reporters, extolling the bright prospects of the Japanese economy and boasting about the scale of EIE's asset expansion this year.

This made him wonder, since short selling usually requires announcing negative news first.

How can you short sell without negative news?

Why hasn't the enemy made a single move yet?
What exactly is that Chinese man planning to do?
Even though he already has the stocks, he's still not ready.

Just as I was thinking this, the stock market opened.

On this day, EIE International opened at a price of 54,600 yen per share, with a market capitalization of nearly 2.6 trillion yen.

The opening reaction was relatively normal. After the market opened, EIE International's stock price gradually rose along with the overall market, once reaching the psychological level of 55,000 yen.

However, twenty minutes later, when both the Nikkei index and trading volume began to decline, unusual market activity emerged.

Suddenly, Iwasawa saw that EIE International, which was originally red, had turned green, and the one percent increase was quickly wiped out.

His pupils contracted sharply, and when he looked at the intraday chart again, he saw that EIE International's stock had begun to fall at an extremely abnormal rate.

54,600 yen, 54,100 yen, 53,700 yen...

In just ten minutes, the price plummeted to 52,900 yen, a drop of 3.2%.

How is this going?

There were far more sellers than buyers, clearly indicating that someone was dumping a large amount of stock.

Has it really begun?
Could it be... could it be that the Chinese person who came to short sell simply used stock selling to drive the price down?

This doesn't align with common financial sense...

Iwasawa was completely bewildered by the incomprehensible situation and didn't know how to react.

He stood there stunned for at least ten minutes before deciding to call Nomura Securities to verify the information.

As for Nomura Securities, the situation is completely different.

For no other reason than that, as the general manager of Nomura Securities' Hong Kong branch, and having made meticulous arrangements in advance, Hiroji Goto was able to use his position to clearly understand Kenichi Sagawa's every move.

He was so clear that it was as if Kenichi Sagawa was directing Ning Weimin's operations right in front of him.

Although he, like Iwasawa, couldn't believe that the enemy was so foolish, they did exactly that.

The stock price decline throughout the morning session was due to Zuochuan dumping shares on behalf of Ning Weimin, concentrating its efforts to sell 65,000 shares in one morning.

This is what happened right under his nose, so what else could he possibly doubt?
It's important to understand that, despite the EIE Group's seemingly large size and market capitalization of 2.6 trillion yen, it has already crossed the threshold of becoming a large corporation.

However, due to the cross-shareholding model, if we remove the fact that EIE Group itself holds 33% of the shares, its long-term partner bank, Japan Long-Term Credit Bank, holds 12% of the shares, and the remaining top ten shareholders include several related companies, securities companies, trust companies, and insurance companies with varying shareholdings, then...

Therefore, only about 40% of EIE Group's shares are actually available for trading on the market, which is approximately 19 million shares.

Even with the 1.42 million shares that Nomura Securities lent to Ning Weimin through securities lending, the total number of freely tradable shares is only slightly over 20 million.

In reality, judging from the daily turnover of this stock, it only averages out to about one percent.

Moreover, because the overall market has been performing well recently, both retail and institutional investors holding stocks are generally bullish. In the past few days, the market has been reluctant to sell. Specifically, for EIE, the turnover rate is less than one percent, with a total turnover of only about 20 billion yuan throughout the day, showing a trend of rising with decreasing volume.

In this way, once a major investor concentrates its resources and makes a move, the effect on stock price fluctuations will be very obvious.

Just like now, in one morning, under the influence of Kenichi Sagawa replacing Ning Weimin in dumping shares, he used only tens of thousands of shares, amounting to 3.4 billion yen, to destroy the original trend.

By midday, the stock had fallen by as much as 4.5%, turning a small daily gain of about 1% into a large green line.

Moreover, it was quite obvious that although there was strong buying support at the beginning of the decline, some retail investors panicked by the end of the midday session, and trading volume surged in the last twenty minutes.

Ultimately, the trading volume exceeded 20 billion yen in just one morning. It is entirely predictable that if the afternoon follows the same pattern, the drop today will definitely exceed 5%, and the trading volume will exceed 35 billion yen. This is a foregone conclusion.

But the problem is, this is too stupid. Retail investors are easy to fool, but institutional investors are not to be trifled with.

EIE stock includes not only related companies, local securities firms, insurance funds, but also foreign investment banks.

Once it's discovered that this is an unjustified drop, then a buying frenzy will begin. How many days can a mere 1.4 million shares be sold?

Instead, it will eventually lead to a short squeeze.

It can only be said that life is more magical than fiction, and the most unbelievable things are often the most true.

So not only did Hiroji Goto enjoy the show, but he also treated Ning Weimin, who instructed Kenichi Sagawa to do this, as a fool, and naturally revealed all the relevant information to Iwasawa of EIE.

Because his thinking is the same as Iwasawa's: there's no negative news, so why is the price dropping so drastically?

Without any preparation, they just crash the stock, like someone rolling up their sleeves and charging in recklessly. Who shorts a stock like that?

Therefore, he became increasingly pessimistic about Ning Weimin, thinking that the Chinese were indeed uncivilized and that Ning was simply courting death.

They are so ignorant and lack basic financial knowledge.

Although they caught the wave of Japan's recent economic boom and became lucky winners of the era thanks to their financial advantages and boldness, such luck could not be sustained due to their limited knowledge.

An amateur is an amateur; they think of stocks as far too simple.

Making a little money by following the market makes you arrogant, and now you actually think you can manipulate the market with such a simple method. You deserve to be unlucky and lose your entire fortune.

And so, that afternoon, when he learned that Kenichi Sagawa had already sold 130,000 shares, Hiroji Goto acted first.

Because he was confident in his abilities and eager to boost his performance, Kenichi Sagawa started buying up cheap shares in small increments when the stock price dropped to 51,100 yen.

They were afraid that if they acted too slowly, fewer customers would come, and they would get less of a bargain. Being able to act ahead of time meant that others were helping them out, and ultimately, the stock price closed at 51,500 yen that day.

As expected, the downward trend continued when the market opened the next day.

Kenichi Sagawa resumed his selling spree, dumping another 60,000 shares, which further dampened EIE's stock price, which had shown signs of rebounding.

However, after the stock price fell another 6%, the decline seemed even more illogical after a night without any negative news, which indeed triggered a buying frenzy by other institutional investors.

By the midday break, EIE International's decline had less than 3% for the day, and Hiroji Goshima had intensified his buying efforts.

That afternoon, in retaliation, Kenichi Sagawa suddenly intensified his selling, releasing 70,000 shares in just half an hour of trading, comparable to the volume of the morning's sell-off.

Such a strong counterattack resulted in insufficient funds to absorb the losses, causing the stock price to plummet.

Half an hour after the market opened in the afternoon, the stocks sold by Sagawa increased the day's decline to 8%, falling to 47,300 yen.

However, a sell-off without any reason is like a spring being compressed; the greater the downward pressure, the greater the resistance.

From that moment on, Iwasawa of the EIE Group and his affiliated companies began to invest the funds they intended to use to increase their holdings.

With these funds, along with Hiroji Goto, it was very easy to sweep up the goods that Kenichi Sagawa had placed orders for.

As a result, the stock price rebounded sharply and quickly returned to above 50,000 yen.

Everyone was taking it easy, knowing that this was just the beginning and they couldn't go too far, lest they scare away this big fish that had walked right into their trap, leaving no one to eat.

Otherwise, if we weren't eyeing the bigger profits later, we could easily push the stock price up to 60,000 yen with everyone's concerted efforts.

Fortunately, things turned out to be just as they had planned carefully.

Kenichi Sagawa acted like a fool who never realized that his side had fallen into a trap or that anything was wrong with the surrounding environment. He then released another 60,000 shares, driving the stock price down again.

And so, for the next eight or nine days until the beginning of November, the two sides repeatedly engaged in this tug-of-war.

Sagawa sold nearly one million shares of EIE stock on behalf of Ning Weimin.

It's worth noting that although the stock price is going down almost every day, a closer look reveals that the intraday chart shows increasing volatility and a gradually narrowing decline.

By November 3, the tenth day, Kenichi Sagawa had sold 1.17 million shares, at one point driving down EIE's stock price to 41,800 yen.

However, at the same time, the account operated by Sagawa also showed clear signs of weakness, with signs that it might be unable to suppress the stock price.

Because no matter how much Sagawa sold that day, there was always capital resolutely buying it up, and the closing price was actually 3% higher than the opening price.

It can be said that Kenichi Sagawa, who held the last 400,000 shares, was in a predicament as he faced an attack from multiple funds and it was difficult to drive the stock price down any further.

However, looking at it from another perspective, the situation was far too good. Kenichi Sagawa's foolish stubbornness allowed many people to get a bargain.

The funds on the other side are getting increasingly excited, waiting for a market shift to naturally reverse the trend.

Especially Hiroji Goto, who knows Sagawa Kenichi's inventory best. He's now thinking about how to swallow up the last few hundred thousand shares, then wait for other funds to drive up the price, while he sells the stocks he recently bought at a low price and makes a profit.

So after the market closed that day, Hiroji Goto even deliberately waited in front of Kenichi Sagawa's door to provoke him, hoping that he would make an irrational gamble the following week.

"Sagawa, why did EIE International only drop by 20%? That shouldn't meet Chairman Ning's requirements, right?"

Hiroji Goto pretended to be a good person and said, "I'm really worried about you. EIE doesn't seem to be reacting much. They seem to not care about this stock price fluctuation at all. I'm saying, are you really okay? Don't let the client blame you. You only have this one big client. If the client rejects you, you're finished."

“No problem,” Kenichi Sagawa said calmly. “You’re going to too much trouble. You just need to make sure I get my due commission and bonus.”

"Sigh, bonuses and commissions are no problem, but are you sure you don't need any help? If you have any questions about trading strategies, we can discuss them. After all, I'm your boss, and it's my responsibility to help you. Besides, I have more experience than you..."

"No need. The specifics of how it's done are trade secrets. I'm not authorized to disclose these things. I can only say that everything is under control, and I hope you won't ask me about it again in the future..."

"No, no, please don't misunderstand, I was just asking out of kindness..."

Is everything under control?

Go ahead and fool the devil.

After laughing it off, Hiroji Goto ended the conversation. He didn't say anything on the surface, but he was secretly overjoyed.

He could tell from Kenichi Sagawa's face that he was trying to remain calm, and he saw the small gesture of him clenching his fists to control his emotions.

He could easily deduce that Sagawa was actually panicking inside.

Even before any positive news from the EIE side was announced, the opportunity to win had almost arrived.

On the contrary, his operation this time was very successful.

He managed to buy over 200,000 shares for the brokerage firm during the stock market downturn, and he was extremely satisfied with himself.

If the selling is completed during the price surge, the profit from this operation is likely to be quite substantial, at least 30%.

If we add the interest from short selling and the appreciation from lending stocks, his Hong Kong branch will break Nomura's record for the highest monthly profit among all its branches.

As for Kenichi Sagawa and Ning Weimin behind him, who cares?

Their rightful fate is to be liquidated and forced to close their positions as soon as possible.

It has to be said that Hiroji Goto had planned everything out. He even contacted Iwasawa of the EIE Group through the executive director of Nomura Securities, and learned that the other party would announce the good news of the asset acquisition next week.

It turns out that Harunori Takahashi has already secured deals with two golf courses in the United States and is ready to sign contracts.

Furthermore, EIE plans to take this opportunity to announce its new cross-industry development strategy, aiming to expand into a new track by integrating the resources of the many golf courses it has acquired, thereby becoming a first-class golf course chain brand and an organizer of international golf tournaments.

It's easy to imagine how EIE's stock will react next week, given that real estate is already in high demand.
It can be said that the time to eliminate Sagawa Kenichi and Ning Weimin is already in hand. Next Monday, when the market opens and they have taken the last of their chips, their moment of execution should arrive.

However, little did they know that despite the clear script, fate had other plans and things just wouldn't go as planned.

On Monday, November 6, before the market even opened, the Bank of Japan announced a major news: effective immediately, interest rates would be raised from 3.75% to 4.25%.

As a result, when the market opened that day, everything was in the red. The Japanese stock market seemed to have taken a laxative, with many companies experiencing a collective plunge... (End of this chapter)