Chapter 880: Cashing Out and Exiting!

The next two days were holidays, so the stock market was closed!

But neither the Green Brothers Company nor the brokerage firms looking to get a piece of the action were sitting idle.

Taking advantage of these two days, they used local media to heavily promote Green Brothers’ investment performance.

In their publicity campaigns, Green Brothers’ financial reports from recent years were all disclosed.

According to these reports, Green Brothers had not posted a single loss in the past five years, with an annual minimum return on capital of 8%—far exceeding Wall Street’s average of 4.6%.

In particular, during the first half of this year, their return on investment surged past 150%, creating a Wall Street investment miracle.

And that doesn’t even include the $10 billion they raked in from speculating on exchange rates this time around; if you factor that in, a conservative estimate puts their return on investment this year at 200%.

Amid all the media hype, Green Brothers has emerged as the most formidable newcomer on Wall Street, and Reggie Green has even been dubbed the “Wolf of Wall Street.”

Of course, as the majority shareholder of Green Brothers, Li Yi inevitably became the focus of this media hype.

Soon, reports of Li Yi’s achievements began appearing in the newspapers.

Clearly, these outlets had conducted in-depth investigations into Li Yi, providing comprehensive coverage ranging from his background and personal capabilities to his achievements since “breaking into the scene.”

In particular, his expedition to London this year—where he raked in over 10 billion pounds in just three or four months and dealt a crushing blow to the Sassoon family—was widely covered by major media outlets such as The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Global Times.

In their coverage, these outlets emphasized that Li Yi was the largest individual shareholder of Green Brothers, explicitly stating that the company’s massive profit of 10 billion pounds was entirely due to Li Yi’s efforts.

Wow, it all seemed like a well-orchestrated plan. In just a few short days, Li Yi, Reggie Green, and Green Brothers became the darlings of the media!

As a result, Green Brothers’ phone lines were instantly flooded with calls from the public inquiring about investment opportunities!

Li Yi knew this was Wall Street’s way of hyping up Green Brothers—the goal, of course, was to raise public awareness of the company and set the stage for the upcoming “harvest.”

With the company’s stock price pushed so high, someone had to be the one to take the fall, didn’t they?

However, for Green Brothers, this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Even if these institutions did cash out and exit in a few days, causing the stock price to plummet, the impact on the company wouldn’t be significant.

After all, this wave of frenzied publicity alone has skyrocketed the company’s visibility—in terms of impact, it’s worth at least hundreds of millions in advertising.

And for an investment firm, name recognition and public trust are the very cornerstones of survival and growth—they are capital.

So when Green Reggie asked him how to handle the situation, Li Yi gave him four words: “Go with the flow.”

While keeping a close eye on how the situation unfolded, Li Yi was also making preparations to return to Hong Kong Island.

His purpose in coming to New York this time was to make money.

Now that the money had been made, they just had to wait for the stock market situation to resolve before they could head back.

Besides, there were still quite a few matters on Hong Kong Island that required his attention…

………

Monday, August 16!

The New York Stock Exchange was as bustling as ever. After two days of media hype, public anticipation for the Green Brothers Company had reached a fever pitch.

As soon as the market opened today, the company’s stock price shot up like a hypertensive patient who hadn’t taken their medication.

In just two and a half hours that morning, Green Brothers’ stock price soared from $38 at the opening to $49, on the verge of breaking the $50 mark.

By the afternoon, the stock price had been driven up to $65 per share.

Compared to $14 on the 12th, Green Brothers’ stock price had already risen nearly fivefold, but judging by the trend, there was still room for further gains.

This left Li Yi marveling: when it comes to market madness, you really have to look to the U.S. stock market!

Just think about our A-shares: protected by the daily price limit mechanism, listed stocks can only rise or fall by a maximum of 10%.

Once the daily limit is reached, no matter how many people try to push the price, it simply won’t move any further.

Under such a system, for a stock to double in price, it would require hitting the daily limit up for multiple consecutive trading sessions.

In contrast, in the U.S. stock market, there are no limits on price movements. To them, price fluctuations are a natural market phenomenon that should not—and cannot—be constrained.

This economic system has also fostered an unprecedented speculative mindset among investors.

As long as there is speculation—or, put another way, as long as there are buyers willing to take the other side of the trade—there will be those willing to take the plunge. Consequently, the U.S. stock market frequently sees “monster stocks” whose prices surge by tens or even hundreds of times.

There are also giant corporations whose stock prices have skyrocketed tens of thousands of times—take Berkshire Hathaway, for example, the company led by the “Oracle of Omaha,” Warren Buffett. Since its IPO, the company’s stock price has risen by a staggering 70,000 times.

Take McDonald’s, for instance: since its IPO in 1965, its stock price has surged as much as 9,000-fold at its peak. Johnson & Johnson, which went public in 1944, has seen a gain of over 10,000-fold; Disney, 13,000-fold; Walmart, 20,000-fold; IBM, 33,000-fold; Altria (the manufacturer of Marlboro cigarettes), 170,000-fold; and Coca-Cola, 500,000-fold…

So, while the 5x increase at the Green Brothers Company may seem a bit crazy, it’s actually just standard practice in this context.

After all, Green Brothers’ return on investment is truly off the charts, and its $10 billion in profits are very real—a company like this is naturally favored by the market.

However, Li Yi was well aware of one thing: the higher the stock price is driven up now, the harder retail investors will get hit when those institutions cash out.

To avoid becoming the one left holding the bag, Li Yi immediately instructed Green Reggie to stop buying when the stock price hit $72 and cash out right away!

Although Reggie Green was somewhat reluctant—he believed the stock price could easily reach $80, and selling now would mean missing out on significant gains—

But he trusted Li Yi’s judgment. Since Li Yi believed it was time to cash out, there was no point in holding on.

Besides, they had already made a substantial profit, and there was no need to wait until the stock hit its absolute peak to sell.

Subsequently, under Green Reggie’s orders, the team began quietly selling off the company’s publicly traded shares.

Over the past few days, Green Reggie and the company’s team had collectively snapped up over 40 million shares of the company’s stock, accounting for about 5% of the total shares.

To avoid causing fluctuations in the stock price, the team could only place small-batch orders each time, and it wasn’t until just before the market closed that they finally managed to sell all the shares.

Meanwhile, Li Yi’s side also sold off the more than 36,000 shares they held and directly submitted a settlement request to the NYSE.

After completing these tasks, Green Reggie, overcome with excitement, immediately notified all company employees to attend a celebratory banquet that evening, and also invited Li Yi and Jiang Xue to join.

Naturally, Li Yi wouldn’t refuse such an invitation; after all, as a major shareholder, it wouldn’t make sense for him not to attend.

However, since it was still early, the group decided to return to the office to carefully calculate the returns on this investment.

Subsequently, the group made their way back to Green Brothers Company in a grand procession…

………