After reading the ten-page-long column, Eric talked with Chris on the phone for another half an hour. Hanging up the phone, he was sitting in front of the computer thinking about the problems he might face in the next period of time, when there was a knock on the door.
Looking up, Cindy stood at the door, looked at his expression, and asked with concern: "Eric, what happened?"
Eric leaned back a little on the leather chair, and opened his hands to Cindy. Then the woman came in and leaned against his arms with a smile.
Gently stroking Cindy's slightly raised belly, Eric's chin rested on her shoulder, feeling the alluring fragrance of a woman, and said, "Why don't you take a longer rest?"
"It's already eight o'clock." Cindy pulled her cheek to touch Eric's profile, and said, "Breakfast is ready."
Eric looked at the time in the lower right corner of the computer monitor, but didn't get up, and said, "Let Linda live here during this time, she can still help take care of you."
"Well, she has actually moved here." Cindy nodded, got up and pulled Eric up, and said, "Let's go to dinner first, I still have work in the morning."
Eric opened his mouth, but he didn't continue to persuade Cindy to stop working. Anyway, the recording of the new season of "America's Next Top Model" will be completed next month, and then Cindy will be able to stop and take maternity leave until the baby is born at the end of the year.
After a brief wash, Eric and Cindy came to the dining room together. Linda, who was only wearing a light pink long T-shirt and showing her long legs, was laying out breakfast. Seeing Eric and Cindy come in, he didn't forget to give Eric a goosebump because of what happened last night, and then thoughtfully helped Cindy open a chair.
Eric sat down at the dining table, just picked up the cutlery, and remembered another thing, to the two women: "I will go to Australia in early August, and the firefly system's executive party is going to be held there this year, you want to come together ?"
"It's winter in Australia right now?" Linda immediately shook her head and said, "I won't go, I'm afraid of the cold."
Cindy immediately remembered that Virginia and the others were still in Australia, and there must be a reason for Eric to arrange the party there. At this time, the man said that he would take the two of them there, obviously intending to push them to the front of the stage.
If she can confirm her identity in front of the core executives of the firefly system, it will be of great benefit to herself and the child in her womb. However, after hesitating for a moment, Cindy also shook her head and said, "Forget it, I'm not suitable for making airplanes now, and Linda and I have been working on several projects recently, so we can't leave."
Eric nodded: "Forget it, let's talk about it next time."
Linda came to her senses at this time, and when she heard that Cindy decided not to go, she couldn't speak again, but just touched her flat belly secretly, and there was a bit of resentment in her eyes.
After breakfast, Eric sent Cindy and Linda to work at the production company, and then he himself rushed to the headquarters of Firefly Investment.
After nine o'clock, Eric came to the office area of Firefly Investment Company located in Building 50, Rockefeller Center. Under the guidance of the staff, he pushed the door directly into a meeting room, and found that Chris was leaning on the big room alone. sitting at the conference table, staring intently at a wall-mounted TV.
Seeing Eric coming, Chris nodded and immediately pointed to the TV screen.
At this time, Eric recognized the figure of a middle-aged judge on the TV screen that he had seen in the video a few days ago.
Came to Chris and leaned side by side with him at the conference table, Thomas Jackson on the screen was being interviewed by CNN, and showed the host several pages of documents: "...After collecting evidence during this period, we can already be 100% sure Microsoft has a very serious monopolistic behavior. In my opinion, only by breaking up Microsoft and implementing stricter controls can this company prevent this company from further hindering normal competition in the industry... "
Listening to the middle-aged judge talking with the CNN host, Eric raised his hand and looked at his watch. It was already 9:15, and there were only 15 minutes left before the opening of Nasdaq.
Chris noticed Eric's movements and said: "It's too late now, even if some people react, it is impossible to respond effectively."
Eric nodded in approval, understanding what Chris meant.
According to some statistical data over the weekend, the cumulative short position of the Nasdaq index in trading markets around the world is conservatively estimated to be no less than 60 billion U.S. dollars. Such a large-scale capital force is ready to attack, and the stock market of any country in the world All unbearable.
However, the current total market value of Nasdaq stocks has reached 7.9 trillion US dollars. Investors naturally don't want such a huge wealth to disappear with the stock market crash. Therefore, if the layout of the short-selling forces can be predicted in advance, an effective counterattack can definitely be made.
It's just that too many people are immersed in the joy that the Nasdaq index has just broken through 5,000 points, and they have not been sufficiently alert to the direction of public opinion in recent days.
Eric had anticipated this in advance, but the Firefly system didn't have any plans to be the first bird, let alone have no such strength. The collapse of the Nasdaq index, which has reached its peak, is inevitable, and if you go against the trend, you will only be crushed to pieces.
Eric and Chris watched the situation calmly in the conference room of Firefly Investment Company, but for the securities industry, this is not destined to be a peaceful day.
With the rapid spread of the remarks made by Thomas Jackson, the trial judge of the Microsoft antitrust case, in an interview with CNN, coupled with a series of negative comments on the weekend, whether it is premeditated or a premonition of the crisis, it is distributed in North America and even the world Stock managers everywhere have clearly found that orders to sell technology stocks today are much more than before.
In the end, at 9:30 in the morning, the Nasdaq index had just opened, and a one-time sell order of more than US$1 billion directly knocked down Microsoft's stock price by more than 3 percentage points.
But this is far from over. In the next hour, almost all major technology stocks such as Yahoo, Cisco, Intel, and Amazon on the Nasdaq stock market ushered in huge sell orders.
After the demand for buying technology stocks that were far from being able to hedge the scale of selling in the market was quickly offset, a large number of stock selling orders began to squeeze, which continued to pull down the stock prices of major technology stocks.
Thus, panic began to spread.
More investors who got the news began to join the ranks of selling, and quickly formed a terrifying domino effect.
At 4:00 p.m. ET, the Nasdaq eventually closed at 4,960, down 1.9%. However, a series of mainstream technology stocks that have been heavily sold have suffered heavy losses.
Microsoft shares fell 8.3% in a single day.
Cisco shares fell 5.6 percent in a single day.
Yahoo shares fell 6.5 percent in a single day.
Intel shares fell 5.9%.
Amazon shares fell 9.6% in one day.
…
However, behind this series of declining figures that represent the disappearance of tens of billions of dollars of wealth is only the beginning.
At the same time, Wall Street once again fully demonstrated its unscrupulous side in the face of a gloomy Nasdaq market.
Last week, the major investment bank analysts who were still advocating that the Nasdaq will hit a new high and hit the 6,000-point mark have changed their tunes at this time, almost overwhelmingly belittling the investment value of technology stocks.
In the following four trading days, as the chain reaction caused by the stock market crash further fermented, the Nasdaq index fell by more than 100 points every day.
Although the federal government and various new technology companies have tried to stabilize the Nasdaq index through various means, but the results have had little effect.
Because a large number of investors were using investment leverage unscrupulously in order to maximize profits during the last crazy period of the Nasdaq. This also greatly reduces the ability of these investors to resist risks.
Generally, the investment leverage is about five to ten times, so that investors can only bear a decline of about 10% to 20% in a certain stock at most.
But in fact, many stocks often have a drop of more than 10% in one day.
As the situation continues to deteriorate, it is no longer even up to investors to decide whether to sell stocks. In order to prevent losses from reaching unbearable levels, many financing institutions that provide financial guarantees for leveraged investors have to forcibly liquidate the stocks in the hands of customers. A large amount of selling orders flowed into the market, further causing a vicious circle of stock price declines.
On July 23, the nightmare week of the new technology market finally came to an end. The Nasdaq index closed at 4,373 points, a 13.5% drop from last week’s peak of 5,056 points, and more than $1 trillion in wealth disappeared.
A series of leading technology stocks that led the Nasdaq market in the early stage fell more than the entire Nasdaq market.
Affected by Thomas Jackson's remarks on Monday, Microsoft's stock price fell by 22.7% in five days, and its market value fell straight from the highest point of more than 600 billion US dollars to 469.9 billion US dollars.
Cisco, which just took the top spot in the world's market value, saw its stock price drop by 25.9% in a week, and its market value fell all the way to $453.1 billion.
Yahoo, which Eric has been most concerned about, also suffered a 16.5% drop in five days, which was within Eric's tolerance range, and the company's market value remained above 200 billion US dollars, reaching 215.5 billion US dollars.
The stock prices of Amazon, Sprint, Qualcomm and other companies in the Firefly system were not spared, and all experienced declines to varying degrees.
In comparison, Nokia, which is listed on multiple stock exchanges in North America and Europe at the same time, was the least affected by the collapse of the Nasdaq. Coupled with its own solid performance support, its share price was only 3.9% lower at Friday’s close than last week. fall.
In the evening, Bill Gates, who had been exhausted for a whole week due to Thomas Jackson's statement on Monday, hurried to Manhattan, all the way to Eric's penthouse apartment at the entrance of Sixth Avenue.
Bill Gates felt depressed when he saw the figure sitting leisurely by the chair in the outdoor garden on the roof with his legs crossed while reading the newspaper and drinking coffee.
Due to the success of Microsoft, he should have been one of the proudest people in the world with his huge wealth, but it is always difficult for Bill Gates to find any sense of superiority in front of this young man in front of him.
Unceremoniously sitting down on a chair, Bill Gates glanced at the newspaper in Eric's hand and said, "Eric, you'd better give me a reason that satisfies me."
Eric folded the newspaper and put it in front of him, poured a cup of coffee for the classmate at the gate, pointed to the direction of the Hudson River not far away, and said with a smile: "I suddenly felt that there should be a fireworks display recently, so I bought one Boat, start at eight o'clock."
Bill Gates didn't touch the coffee in front of him, subconsciously helped his glasses, and said, "Eric, don't you think this is boring?"
"Okay," Eric put away his expression, but he still obviously looked helpless, and said: "We are talking about business, the current situation is very bad, Yahoo needs some good news, and the same is true for Microsoft, so let's cooperate what kind?"
Bill Gates showed a contemptuous look: "And then?"
Eric handed a folder to Bill Gates, opened the laptop next to him, and said: "I have drawn up the contract. But let's take a look at this first, you will definitely be interested, um, some Long, let’s just look at it from here.”
Eric said, adjusted the progress bar, turned the laptop screen to the door student, and pressed the play button.
Immediately, a voice familiar to Bill Gates came from the speaker.
"Publishing this kind of out-of-court remarks in public is a serious violation of judicial process, and it will probably ruin my career. So, $2 million is not enough. If it succeeds, you need to pay me another $300 Ten thousand U.S. dollars."
"Thomas, you are too greedy. Two million dollars is already a huge sum of money."
"Don't think I don't understand this, Dean. According to the size of your short position, if the Nasdaq crashes, you can make at least several billion dollars. Therefore, this is not negotiable."
There was a moment of silence in the video before another voice sounded again: "Okay, I promise you."
Eric looked at Bill Gates' widening eyeballs, reached out and slapped the laptop shut, picked it up and put it back to his side.
As if being woken up from sleep, Bill Gates suddenly raised his head, glared at Eric, and realized his situation in a blink of an eye, put away his expression and said: "Eric, what are you doing? illegal."
Eric pointed to the direction of the door, shrugged and said, "If you're not interested, feel free."
Bill Gates swallowed, and after a moment of deadlock with Eric, he picked up the folder he had just handed over and opened it.
After flipping through it in a hurry, Bill Gates quickly put it down and said, "It's okay to give up that share subscription contract. But Yahoo browser continues to enjoy its original status on the Microsoft platform, which is simply impossible."
"I didn't think of such a good thing," Eric said: "You must have missed it carefully. Yahoo can pay Microsoft $1 for each operating system to pre-install."
"But it's only equivalent to less than 50 million US dollars per year, Eric, if it were you, would you like it?"
"Of course I don't want to," Eric patted the laptop in front of him: "So, this is Yahoo's compensation to Microsoft."
"This video does not necessarily help Microsoft," Bill Gates pretended to be disdainful: "Once it is exposed, it may even have a counterproductive effect."
"So, so far, the people who have watched this video plus you have just got a hand," Eric said, "Recently, I have been thinking about this issue. Standing in our position, it is often very It's hard to do things as you want, too often, we have to make compromises. Like this video, my first thought was to expose it, and then stand by and watch the fun. But then I realized, If it is not exposed, it seems that it will bring some benefits, of course, this is for Microsoft, Firefly can't use this thing."
Bill Gates narrowed his eyes: "Eric, are you suggesting that I threaten the Department of Justice?"
"It's just a negotiation," Eric shrugged. "Microsoft is now a victim, even a persecuted one. So, even the president has to make compromises for this. You know, it is impossible for Clinton to stand There is another political storm. But the current situation is that a middle-aged judge caused the entire Nasdaq market to collapse for his own self-interest, and trillions of dollars of wealth disappeared like fireworks. I heard It is said that there have been investors who jumped off the building due to bankruptcy this week. Well, once the scandal in the video is exposed, Thomas Jackson will definitely become the target of public criticism, but the Clinton administration, which has always strongly advocated investigating Microsoft, will definitely not be able to stay out of it. Even if it cannot happen again A second impeachment, but countless angry investors who lost money in a stock market crash, would be enough to end the political careers of the Clintons, which is exactly what they both fear most.”