Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Great Joker

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As evening drew near, the setting sun sank toward the horizon, while radiant clouds wove a splendid tapestry across the sky.

In Classroom 202 of the First Teaching Building, the lecturer for Financial Modeling and Quantitative Analysis continued explaining the material he had been unable to finish two days earlier. Hardly any of the students below were listening, however; each was busy with his or her own affairs.

There were several reasons for this. Quantitative analysis and financial modeling were both relatively abstruse subjects, and purely theoretical lectures were unbearably dull. Most of the students could barely understand them at all.

Of course, there was another reason.

In 2009, the A-share market had not yet been subjected to quantitative harvesting. The students had no idea how formidable it could be, and even the lecturer had never personally experienced the terror of high-frequency trading executing hundreds of transactions in a single second.

“Bzz-bzz—”

The Nokia in Zhang Yang’s trouser pocket vibrated twice. He released the mouse, took out his phone, and checked the message.

[Dear customer, your China Construction Bank account ending in 2389 received a transfer of 5,000 Huaguo dollars at 5:32 p.m. on April 8, 2009. Available balance: 5,174 Huaguo dollars. Memo: Labor fee for operating an account in the Huaxin Securities Simulation Trading Competition.]

“Didn’t he come to class?”

Looking at the deposit notification, Zhang Yang turned and scanned the lecture hall. Sure enough, he saw no sign of Lai Weijie.

At the same time, a notification began flashing in the lower-right corner of his laptop screen. Someone had sent him a message on QQ.

There was no need to guess. It had to be Lai Weijie asking about the transfer.

With his roommate beside him and classmates sitting behind him, too many pairs of eyes were watching. If he opened his chat window with Lai Weijie now, their transaction might be exposed.

Zhang Yang deliberately ignored the notification and continued with his own affairs.

After achieving the impressive record of three limit-up days in a row, he had not bothered to hide his results. He had synchronized them all to an alternate account on Baidu Tieba.

His Tieba account was called Joker.

Why had he chosen that name?

It was connected to an experience from Zhang Yang’s past life.

When he had first arrived on Wall Street in the United States, he had secured an internship at Goldman Sachs thanks to his outstanding professional ability. Yet he had repeatedly run into obstacles because he did not know how to talk customers into investing.

Take a shark-fin structured wealth-management product, for example. Other investment managers would promote it by citing the highest historical returns of similar products, along with its unique resistance to risk and its guarantee of principal.

Under such a barrage of half-truths and outright fabrications, customers found it difficult to distinguish fact from fiction. Before they knew it, they had handed over their money.

When the returns were eventually paid, the customers would discover that they differed from what had originally been promised. The investment managers could then brush them off by blaming market fluctuations.

Young and inexperienced, Zhang Yang did not understand human weakness. When promoting shark-fin structured wealth-management products, he never deceived customers by flaunting their highest historical returns. Instead, he focused on their stable returns and risk resistance, believing that sincerity was the best policy.

Yet many customers would hear that his product offered an annualized return of only five percent, while someone else’s offered seven or even eight percent. No matter how foolish they were, they knew whom to give their money to.

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Zhang Yang’s sincerity brought him no sales. His performance remained among the worst of the interns, and he was on the verge of being fired.

Then, at a dance party, Zhang Yang met a female investment manager named Sun Yue. After the two exchanged their thoughts and opened up to each other, she asked a waiter for a brand-new deck of playing cards. She drew out two jokers and showed them to Zhang Yang.

“If you want to survive in finance, you have to speak against your conscience. You must be as sly and cunning, as unscrupulous and ruthless, as a joker. You treat people sincerely, but no one will treat you sincerely in return. If you insist on keeping your principles and maintaining your moral integrity, then refraining from insider trading is already the greatest kindness you can offer.”

That heart-to-heart conversation finally made Zhang Yang understand: it was schemes, not sincerity, that won people over. Treating others honestly was useless.

It was much the same with salespeople peddling health supplements. Which of them did not describe their products in the most extravagant terms, claiming they could cure every illness? Yet only the salespeople knew that these so-called health supplements were nothing more than harmless, barely effective placebos.

Because one side was willing to make such claims and the other was willing to believe them, countless retirees became addicted to expensive health supplements and could not extricate themselves.

If the salespeople did not exaggerate the effects of their products, who would buy their placebos?

From then on, having awakened to the truth, Zhang Yang changed the names of all his social-media accounts to Joker. He gradually lowered his moral standards, and his career soared as a result. He eventually became a star manager at Bridgewater Associates.

…

Having grown accustomed to using Joker, Zhang Yang had no intention of changing his ID. Besides, joker could also mean a trump card. For the past three days, he had been posting his live trading returns under that account.

The Tieba account, which had originally had no followers, now had 104.

He opened the post he had published at four that afternoon. More than a hundred replies had already appeared, their contents varied so wildly that they were dizzying to read.

[Chasing the Wind]: Three limit-up days in a row, and you even caught a floor-to-ceiling limit-up! Great Joker, please take me under your wing. I’m willing to pay for lessons!

[The Lone Speculator of the Vast Sea]: This is fucking incredible! A total return of 47.89 percent in three days. Is this what a true folk-market genius looks like?

[Crazy Cowboy]: Great Joker, can Chang’an Automobile still be held? I bought in when it surged yesterday.

[Evening Glow]: A total return of 47.89 percent in three trading days! Joker, if you take students, please contact me!

Perhaps many retail investors held a misconception. They assumed that three limit-up days in a row, including a floor-to-ceiling limit-up, could produce a maximum return of forty percent. That was incorrect. A simple calculation would make the truth clear.

Let P represent the previous day’s closing price. A ten-percent rise would bring it to 1.1P, the maximum single-day increase on the first day.

On the first day, the stock opened ten percent lower at 0.9P. The rise from 0.9P to 1.1P was 22.22 percent, meaning the return for that day was 22.22 percent.

Since the closing price on the first day was 1.1P, a ten-percent increase on the second day amounted to 0.11P. Adding that to 1.1P gave 1.21P.

The same applied on the third day. A ten-percent increase from 1.21P was 0.121P, and adding the two figures produced 1.331P.

Returning to the original purchase price of 0.9P, the rise from 0.9P to 1.331P was 47.83 percent. That was also the total return on Zhang Yang’s live trading account for Chang’an Automobile.

Over three trading days, his 3,300 shares of Chang’an Automobile had generated a total profit of 10,477.8 Huaguo dollars—a gain of 47.83 percent.

While Zhang Yang continued browsing the internet, Xu Zhiruo sat in the third row, her sweet face framed by a high ponytail. She had agonized over it for half the lesson, yet still had not sent the message.

After another ten minutes of inner struggle, she chose to flee the lecture hall.

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Since this was a university, students could leave in the middle of class without affecting the lecture or needing to submit a request.

After slipping out through the rear door, she found an empty classroom, took out her pink LG GD580 phone, and called her younger sister, Xu Zhirou.

Before long, the call connected.

“What?”

Her sister’s question was brief and direct.

Xu Zhiruo grew somewhat bashful and lowered her voice. “It’s… it’s about that thing with Zhang Yang you mentioned. I… I’m a little embarrassed to approach him by myself. Come with me, okay?”

“…”

There was a noticeable silence on the other end before Xu Zhirou replied, “I’m busy. Deal with your own problems yourself.”

“You’re not.”

“I am.”

“You’re not.”

“I am.”

They went back and forth more than a dozen times. Unable to do anything about her sister, Xu Zhirou finally relented.

“What time?”

“Eight tonight. Send Zhang Yang a message for me. That settles it.”

“Beep…”

Xu Zhiruo hung up so quickly that she gave Xu Zhirou no chance to refuse.

“Useless.”

Still playing badminton at the gymnasium, Xu Zhirou stared at the disconnected call and could not help cursing her older sister.

“What’s wrong with Zhiruo?”

A well-groomed young man approached, holding a Yonex badminton racket. He was around five feet nine inches tall.

His name was Cheng Zhihong. He was an accounting student who had enrolled at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics in 2006, and he was also the deputy president of the badminton club.

“You and Mengmeng can keep playing. I need to reply to a message.”

Xu Zhirou walked to the edge of the court and began searching through her QQ contacts for Zhang Yang.

Cheng Zhihong did not press her. He simply continued playing badminton with the female substitute player.

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