Investment Life

Chapter 36

On February 1, after getting off the train and stepping into Shanghai, a metropolis full of adventure and opportunity, Chen Yuanming took a deep breath. Without the heavy haze of his hometown, this not-so-blue-sky, seemed to be sunnier.

Today was the first day the stock market opened after the new year. His train was behind schedule and he had failed to arrive before the official opening time. However, after returning to his hotel, Chen Yuanming flipped through the latest financial newspapers. The situation was still good.

On the first day after the new year, the Shanghai Stock Market opened on a high and the Shanghai Stock Exchange had become even more popular. Except for a few volatile new stocks, the rest of the market was rising steadily. At the same time, Shenzhen's stock market was also performing well. It seemed like the entire Chinese stock market was booming.

In addition to this news, Hainan's real estate boom occupied the pages of the largest financial newspapers. Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, this was the first real estate construction wave.

Compared with the caution and ignorance of the real estate industries in the provinces and cities of the Mainland over the same period, Hainan's real estate fever displayed a frightening rate of development. Of course, here, the impact of the southern tour speech was indispensable. As soon as the slogan "Accelerate Housing System Reform" was announced, the bugle was sounded, and hundreds of billions of yuan in funds were poured into the coastal cities of the south, causing a violent wave.

With land prices skyrocketing, people no longer considered whether the cost of commercial housing had exceeded the prevailing wage rate at the time, or whether the residential areas, per capita, had reached saturation. Instead, they continued to add bricks to the land and squandered funds and labor for predictable profits. Even banks and brokerage firms plunged their hands into this muddy water causing a large number of non-performing loans to appear. It seemed that so long as real estate companies were given a crowbar, they could overturn the whole land of Hainan.

Because profits that could be directly seen were obviously more in line with the habits of Chinese people, a real estate craze, that was even more fanatical than the prior stock market craze, broke out.

Chen Yuanming looked at the newspaper in front of him and shook his head gently. He did not know just how many people will fall into this trap.

At the opening of the stock market the next day, Chen Yuanming arrived early at the large family room. To his surprise, he found that there were two people already sitting in the cubicle. It was Xiao Yun and his nephew. Seeing Chen Yuanming's figure, Xiao Yun stood up with a smile.

"Yuanming, back from home? How was the New Year?"

Chen Yuanming smiled, "Seeing the stock market so red, naturally I'm fine."

This sentence caused Xiao Yun to smile knowingly. At this time, Xiao Junyi also came over and said hello to Chen Yuanming.

Xiao Yun patted his nephew's shoulder with a smile. "This kid still has a few days left in his annual vacation, so he came to Shanghai to accompany his grandmother. I decide to let him follow me here, you don't mind, do you?"

"No, I don't mind." Intuitively, Chen Yuanming neither liked nor disliked this boy, so of course he certainly didn't care about his existence.

After chatting for a while, the group sat back on the sofa and studied the broader market.

The opening was still strong, but in the last half of the prior month, the two of them had no longer engaged in short selling the stocks on their books and were just waiting for a high point. Drinking tea, reading newspapers, talking about the market, their day seemed to have returned to their former leisurely attitude. Sitting this way until 11 o'clock, Xiao Junyi glanced at Chen Yuanming's indifferent expression, and finally couldn't help it.