Those Years When I Was Forced to Top the Forbes List

Chapter 94 My Fleet (Part 1)

As a consumable, I have finally been exhausted. The rise of the younger generation and the transformation of society have made me unable to compete.

Suddenly realizing that half of my life seems to be getting narrower and narrower, and that the chips in my hand seem to have been lost in the long river of time.

People say, "Marry another woman; you need to have a child eventually, and it will be too late if you don't have one now."

People say, "Stop working so hard, or you'll lose all your savings. Quickly buy the highest possible pension insurance."

I chuckled to myself, then nodded silently.

At 19, I ventured out into the world; at 29, I was full of vigor; at 39, I... was pressured to have a baby and lowered my head.

When did I begin to be swept up in the sea of ​​people, labeled as an "80s generation," "90s generation," or "18 years old," "30 years old," or "40 years old," and thus be swept along and expected to be?

What about my dreams? What about my love?
Where is my soul?
In my dreams, I often walk through bustling streets, watching the endless stream of pedestrians with blank expressions. They move in unison, their goals are utterly unwavering, and they seem to be making a solemn vow to reality:
I abandoned my soul, pursued stability, yearned for money, power, vanity, the opinions of others, and the evaluation of society, and was willing to sacrifice my youth for them, becoming a pre-made person who is needed by others.

The stars I saw from birth to age 18, the words that moved me, the scenes that amazed me—all vanished like bubbles after I grew up.

I am one of them.

I wandered in my dreams for twenty years, and in the midst of this illusion, I heard a sigh.

Everything in the world is healing you, but you are binding yourself.

I looked around blankly and asked, "Where are all the things in the world? I can't find them."

"The world is not beyond your sight, but within your eyes."

"In my eyes?"

"Yes, actually you were never in a cage."

Suddenly waking up, I found myself in the examination hall, still in that vibrant senior year of high school.

The two proctors, one standing and one sitting, were swinging their legs gently, clearly feeling a bit sore. They would glance at the time every now and then, wanting to sit down or go for a walk, but they still kept their eyes on the students below, and could not stare at the same student for too long.

These are the exam rules.

We, the test takers and the invigilators, were bound together by the rules during those two and a half hours.

Fortunately, I have the option to leave early. I'm about to go out and breathe some fresh air.

Oh right, my mom said this morning that we can't eat watermelon during the college entrance exam period, so I'm going to eat a slice of watermelon now.

That was happiness, something more important than the college entrance exam.

I laughed.

Stepping out of the college entrance examination hall, I was completely cut off from the 20 years of my dreams.

The next twenty years will be a journey filled with blooming flowers, bustling crowds, excitement, and fervent passion.

------

"Report, submission complete."

Chen Xuebing checked the paper once and raised his hand ten minutes early.

Actually, since his seat was in the middle, he could have waited another ten minutes to see if he had a chance to walk around and copy down the two dictation questions he hadn't answered when the papers were collected.

But he doesn't really want to copy now, so he won't.

After finishing the essay, he felt a sense of relief.

The proctor, who had been eager to give the students a break, took the opportunity to come down, but then said with concern, "There are still ten minutes left, aren't you going to check?"

Chen Xuebing packed up his things, turned the answer sheet upside down on the table, shook his head with a smile, got up, and left his seat.

The proctor picked up the answer sheet with a hint of curiosity and looked at it.

My eyes lit up when I saw the first sentence of the essay, "The first night of my 39th year."

Then he chuckled and said, "Kids these days are so imaginative. They write '39 years old.' Do they even know what 39 years old means?"
Then the more he looked at it, the more he frowned.

"hiss…"

"Hey."

After reading to the end, he took the test paper back to the podium and spread it out in front of another person.

"Look, this is interesting."

The other person stared for a long time, then froze.

Slightly taken aback, he looked at his standing colleague, stood up with a somewhat embarrassed smile, and said, "Old Wu, please sit down, please sit down!"

"Hey! That's not what I meant! Lao Luo, have a seat! I just wanted to show you how well this writing is done!"

The two men started offering each other seats on the stage.

The candidates below looked completely bewildered.

What did he write?
Kong Rong sharing pears?

……

In the afternoon math exam, as soon as Chen Xuebing arrived at the exam room, the student from Nankai Middle School in front of him took the initiative to talk to him.

"Hey, what did you write in your essay? The proctors discussed it for ages."

Chen Xuebing hesitated for a moment, then smiled and said, "I wrote a story. How's your math? Can I see it later for the multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank questions?"

The man immediately became wary and began to scrutinize Chen Xuebing.

Chen Xuebing was also sizing him up.

A few seconds later, both sides came to the same conclusion: the other's performance was probably not very good.

There's no specific reason; it could be posture, clothing, a glance, or the tone of a sentence.

In short, being a poor student is a kind of temperament.

However, the names of their schools were on the nameplates on the corner of the table. One was a poor student from Nanping Middle School, and the other was a poor student from Nankai Middle School. Naturally, the student from Nankai looked down on the student from Nanping.

"You can see for yourself in a bit."

After the other person finished speaking, they quickly turned away.

That's what they said, but throughout the entire exam, the papers at the front were completely covered up.

Chen Xuebing glanced up a few times and realized that the person had no intention of showing it to him, so he lowered his head and continued doing his own thing.

Fortunately, this year's math exam was relatively easy overall, giving him a chance to work on his own. He completed two and a half of the more difficult problems and even drew auxiliary lines for the last geometry problem.

It wasn't until the bell rang that Chen Xuebing glanced at the answer sheet of the person in front of him.

He saw a few answers, narrowed his eyes, looked at his own paper, and then, while the papers were being collected, patted the person in front of him.

As a result, the person in front of them was startled and realized that their answer sheet was exposed, so they immediately covered it up tightly again.

He also ignored Chen Xuebing.

Only after handing in his paper and leaving the room did the man approach Chen Xuebing with a smile.

"I'm sorry, I was busy checking things out just now."

Chen Xuebing gave a half-smile.

"Oh, it's nothing. You seem to have gotten the third question wrong. That question was really easy; you should have chosen C. Oh, and your answer to the fourteenth question was 3? Mine is different from yours. I don't know if I'm right or wrong, but you're definitely wrong. That question was about x being a positive number, and finding the odd root should have a sign. I was going to remind you, but you've been checking for so long, you should have figured it out by now, right?"

The man froze on the spot, his confident smile gone, as if struck by lightning. Chen Xuebing took that smile and put it on his own face.

"Tsk tsk, two questions, ten points..."

……

On the afternoon of June 8th, I finished all four exams.

As Chen Xuebing stepped out of the examination hall, he was still pondering that this year's questions seemed generally easy, and the cutoff score for second-tier universities would probably be much higher than last year.

As I walked out of the examination room, a refreshing breeze greeted me.

Although it had the distinctive smell of smelly socks typical of schools, it exuded an atmosphere of freedom.

At that moment, his heart was racing, just like the students around him.

Liberated!
He took out his exam admission ticket from his pencil case and threw the rest of his things into the trash can.

Small drop.
The college entrance examination is over.

……

As he left the school gate, Chen Xuejin spotted him first and waved to him.

"Mom! My brother is out!"

Yu Chunyan immediately came forward to greet her.

"My dear child! How did the exam go?"

Chen Xuebing smiled and nodded: "At least a third-tier university."

"Oh my!" Yu Chunyan clapped her hands, her excitement beyond words: "When we get home, I'll make you boiled pork slices! And stir-fried tripe! Do you want some cauliflower? I'll go buy some!"

Yu Chunyan rattled off several of Chen Xuebing's favorite dishes.

Chen Xuebing raised his hand to check his watch and asked, "Has my uncle arrived yet?"

"You're here! Your uncle knew you were taking the college entrance exam today, so he drove here to pick you up!"

“I called him here, Mom. You go back first. I have something urgent to take care of.”

Chen Xuebing really wanted to go home and rest for a few days. A lot had happened in the last two months before the college entrance examination.

The stock market has begun to undergo tremendous changes.

On April 30, 2005, the People's Daily published the "Notice on Issues Related to the Pilot Program of Share Structure Reform for Listed Companies" issued by the China Securities Regulatory Commission, officially launching the share structure reform.

The share structure reform will change the situation where state-owned shares and legal person shares, which account for two-thirds of the total share capital, are no longer allowed to circulate in the market, but will be fully circulated.

Such an unprecedented and massive expansion has led many to naturally assume that an increase in the number of stocks will inevitably impact the market, making it a major negative factor.

The already turbulent stock market plummeted from 1159 points at the end of April to a 20-year low of 998 points.

That is, June 6th, the day before the college entrance examination.

That morning, Chen Xuebing called his uncle and his old comrade-in-arms Hong Yongqiang, inviting him to download the "Great Wisdom" stock trading software developed by Wanguo and witness this historic moment.

Chen Xuebing was also watching it live on his computer in the office.

When the Shanghai Composite Index fell below 1000 points, various stock-related forums celebrated the moment, with many moderators posting articles to commemorate the index's drop to three digits.

After years of silence and a steady decline, the stock market has finally seen some changes. Whatever those changes may be, Chinese stock investors want to applaud.

But on that very day, the index stabilized at 998.23, when a mysterious fund suddenly entered the market, raising the index to 1034.38.

After that, the market struggled in waves, gradually rising, and then suddenly surged in the middle of 2006, reaching its peak of 6124.04 on October 16, 2007.

When Chen Xuebing was trading stocks, he studied some historical trading strategies and of course, he also studied the trend charts of A-shares. He had a general idea of ​​where the key points were over the years.

Logically speaking, during this two-and-a-half-year bull market, the first year's increase was not high, only about 60%, which averaged out to about 0.24 percentage points per trading day. There was no need for him to rush into the stock market.

(The stock market is closed for holidays, with only about 250 trading days per year.)
However, a wave-like market with a known trend can actually yield higher returns than a bull market that rises all the way up. This is because it is not easy to get off the train in a frenzied surge where there are more rises than falls, and it is easy to miss out on the gains. The market is also less actionable.

In contrast, the stock market, with its more volatile price swings, offers more opportunities to buy at the bottom.

The trading method of constantly buying low and selling high in the market every day is called "T+0 trading," which Chen Xuebing prefers to call manual quantitative trading.

In other words, the real opportunity for day trading in the stock market should be in the first year of the bull market starting on June 6th. Once the second year begins, one should select some stocks for leveraged financing and then quietly wait for the price to rise.

The bull market has been going on for three days, and the next two or three months will be a major upward wave with a good rate of increase, which will probably reach more than 1200 points.

Always stay with me.

……

Six pm.

Hong Yongqiang led Yu Chunyin and Chen Xuebing into an office with plenty of solid wood furniture, which had an old-fashioned and expensive feel.

"Most of the furniture in this office was salvaged from my scrap metal recycling business. A lot of it is old stuff, but I've taken care of it, so you can sit here without worry!"

Hong Yongqiang introduced with a smile.

Yu Chunyin's eyes lit up slightly: "Old Hong, did your recycling station ever unearth any precious cultural relics back then?"

Hong Yongqiang waved his hand: "There were two precious items, and they were all handed over! We soldiers, how could we keep these things to ourselves?"

Chen Xuebing listened with surprise.

So it turns out that what people call starting out as a scrap metal recycling station was actually starting out as a hoarder of antiques?

Indeed, in the 90s, if you knew your stuff, you could get a lot of good stuff in the scrap recycling business, and it was all at bargain prices.

Many money-making opportunities in this era are both unfamiliar and familiar to Chen Xuebing. He has heard of them, but he doesn't know how they are actually carried out.

Chen Xuebing thought about it and smiled with emotion:
“Uncle Hong, I was planning to talk to you about making money in the stock market, but I didn’t expect you to actually be into it. In that case, I was just being a novice.”

"Good to know!" Hong Yongqiang laughed twice, then looked at the computer on the desktop, smacked his lips, and frowned, saying:

"However, I understand the stock market less and less these days. After the market fell for several years after 01, not many people were playing it anymore. Now they're trying to do some kind of reform, putting all the state-owned enterprise stocks into the market at once. Who will buy them? I thought the news had changed and the stamp duty had been reduced, which would be an opportunity. But this time it has fallen below 1000 points. I'm afraid there are no support levels below. What if it falls back to 500 points?"

Chen Xuebing smiled faintly, took out his phone, and opened a text message.

The above is a list of stock market data sent by Lu Yiwen for today.

These days, you can trade stocks on a computer, and there are several software options available, such as Wind, Financial World, and Wind Information. Most of these companies started out as financial information providers, while software like Tonghuashun and Eastmoney, which became popular later, were just starting out.

The most mature one currently is the Great Wisdom app developed by Wanguo, which has a lot of data, and Chen Xuebing also uses this app.

Starting from the 6th, he instructed the newly hired Taobao customer service staff in his office to log into the software every day and send over several key market data points, once at 10:00 AM and once at 3:00 PM when the market closes.

"Uncle Hong, did you look at today's market data?" Chen Xuebing said, handing over his phone.

Hong Yongqiang nodded, took the phone, and looked at it.

"After the price rose on the 6th, it dropped yesterday, and then rose back up a little today. What's going on?"

Chen Xuebing approached and pointed to a piece of data on his phone: "Price fluctuations are normal. You need to look at the trading volume."

Hong Yongqiang glanced at it again.

"150 billion?"

Chen Xuebing smiled.

"By the way, before the 6th, the daily trading volume of the Shanghai Stock Exchange was around 5 billion yuan. In just two days, the trading volume tripled."

(End of this chapter)