Like Lei Jun, Chen Yongming and Liu Qiangdong also received gifts from Boss Huang. Chen Yongming received a failing mobile phone company, perfect for rebranding, named "Fruits," making it a literal fruit phone.
Liu Qiangdong's gift was more unique: ten veteran employees from Jiangnan Logistics. Upon learning Liu Qiangdong planned to start logistics in the US, Boss Huang realized he lacked relevant resources there. So, he gifted Liu Qiangdong ten old employees from Jiangnan Logistics' headquarters. These employees were deeply familiar with Jiangnan Logistics' operations and systems, enabling them to quickly help Liu Qiangdong build his logistics network.
Naturally, these employees remained part of Jiangnan Group, receiving their salaries from them. Their work would also accumulate seniority and merit within Jiangnan Group, possibly even more. In the future, these individuals were expected to return to Jiangnan Group.
This wasn't due to Boss Huang being unwilling to truly part with these employees. However, after inquiring, no one wanted to leave the stable and promising Jiangnan Group to work for Liu Qiangdong. Why leave a secure future for a debt-ridden individual working in the US? Thus, Boss Huang had to retain their positions within Jiangnan Group and offer double merit points to find ten veteran employees to help Liu Qiangdong establish his logistics system.
Beyond these three companies, other enterprises that arrived in the US also received gifts from Boss Huang, primarily crucial resources for their development. The total value of these gifts likely exceeded 200 million US dollars.
Upon seeing the resources Boss Huang provided, almost everyone was deeply moved. They realized Boss Huang was a truly dependable person. Although they understood Boss Huang lured them to the US to form a united front and compete in the high-tech market, he had genuinely invested 200 million US dollars in hard cash to help them establish a foothold. Such actions were unprecedented throughout history.
The results finally began to emerge. Motorola was the first to release its first-half financial report. The data indicated that after changing presidents, Motorola had ended its sales decline and performance losses in the first half of the year, showing a significant upturn. Mobile phone sales increased by 1.2 million units, and sales revenue rose by 1 billion US dollars.
Nokia followed suit, announcing its first-half performance. This was even more impressive. Global mobile phone sales for the entire first half reached 6.62 million units, setting the company on track to break the ten million unit mark for the year, potentially setting a new world record. First-half sales revenue reached 5.67 billion US dollars, also a new all-time high.
Fueled by the financial reports of these two leading companies, the stock prices of Nokia and Motorola surged by 46.32%. In the following days, they continued to rise by approximately 30%, resulting in an overall increase of over 80%. A stock that was originally priced at $10 now soared to $18. Such performance was astonishing, leading many to exclaim that the era of mobile phones had truly arrived.
With the stock prices of these two companies skyrocketing by 80%, the Western Mustang Fund, which had confidently planned to short these stocks, became a laughingstock. While they rose by 80%, the fund faced losses of around 40%. The myth of Little Swift was about to crumble, a god falling from grace.
Thus, the third Black God Twilight was about to begin.
Posthumously, people would refer to every instance of the financial god Little Swift facing potential downfall as a Black God Twilight. The first Black God Twilight was when Little Swift shorted Yahoo. The second Black God Twilight was when Little Swift shorted direct mail. Now, Little Swift's shorting of mobile phones marked the third Black God Twilight. As for whether there would be a fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth... you guess!
According to later online discussions, this third Black God Twilight commenced, and it was even more ferocious than the previous two. During the first Black God Twilight, Yahoo's stock price didn't fall, nor did it rise significantly; everything was uncertain. During the second Black God Twilight, although oil prices fell sharply, later analyses of various details revealed signs of an impending oil price surge. However, people at the time were so fixated on the sharp decline that they overlooked these signs.
But this third Black God Twilight was different. The stock prices of several mobile phone companies had surged dramatically, reaching highs of 96%. By all accounts, a sharp decline seemed impossible. Furthermore, both at the time and in retrospect, no market fluctuations could provide any evidence that the stock prices of these mobile phone companies would plummet. Even Warren Buffett and George Soros, upon reviewing these companies' financial reports and market details, would certainly not have committed the folly of shorting companies like Motorola and Nokia!
Therefore, this third Black God Twilight was far more intense than the previous two. Speculation and mockery surged again in the outside world. Every white person eagerly anticipated the downfall of Little Swift, the black financial god.
This time, however, there weren't as many buyers protesting at the door. The Western Mustang Fund had learned from its previous experience and directly opened a refund channel on the Alipay software. They announced that within ten days, all buyers who regretted purchasing the fund could receive a full refund, subject to a 1.5% handling fee. Simultaneously, Alipay immediately opened a new channel for purchasing funds, but this channel was exclusively for funds that had been refunded.
After the channel opened for a day, only over a thousand units of funds were gradually released for purchase, and they were snapped up in less than a tenth of a second by swift buyers. This proved that after experiencing the previous two Black God Twilights, buyers' resolve this time was much firmer. Especially when they recalled news reports about those who had sold their funds after the second Black God Twilight, thus forfeiting 100% of their profits, they were determined not to make the same mistake.
Consequently, on the second day, even fewer funds were refunded, with only around 300 units. Then, on the third day, the Western Mustang Fund issued a rather audacious announcement. They stated that due to the small number of refund users and the large number of attempting buyers, and discovering some users employing抢购 (robotic purchasing) software to grab these purchase opportunities, creating unfairness for others, they would adopt an auction-based system for the purchase channel. Once a new unit of the fund was listed, users could directly bid. If no one exceeded the price within five minutes, the unit of the fund could be purchased, with each price increase no less than one dollar.
Good heavens, they were directly auctioning them off. What happened next defied the expectations of those outside predicting the downfall of the Western Mustang Fund: once the bidding opened, a unit of the fund, originally priced at $100, was bid up to $130 within ten minutes. It continued to rise, eventually closing at $157 after two hours. In other words, someone was willing to pay a 57% premium to buy the Western Mustang Fund. This meant the Western Mustang Fund's return had to exceed 57% the following year just to break even. It was utterly insane.
However, insane events continued to repeat themselves. While such exaggerated increases of 57% did not occur again, the weekly prices generally remained within the $140 to $150 range. This meant customers were generally willing to pay a 40% premium to purchase the Western Mustang Fund, even as the storm of the Black God Twilight appeared to be growing more terrifying.
It was at this time that BLg's blind box stores, as well as all retail outlets of Atari Communications and Bell Communications, began stocking a mobile phone named "bellmi1." Judging by the name, it seemed to be a new model released by Bell. Translated, it would be Bell Mi 1. Since the word "bell" can refer to the name Bell or the sound of a bell, calling it Zhong Mi 1 (钟米1), where "Zhong" means bell, would also be perfectly acceptable.