Jiang Chen, a day laborer in one of Shenzhen’s urban villages, discovers the night before his landlord kicks him out that his beat-up phone can predict the next day’s stock market.
Starting with just 200 yuan, he sticks to the rules and quietly compounds his profits. Before long, he’s gone from a cramped room in a stairwell to a spacious apartment at Shenzhen Bay No. 1, from seven-yuan Red Double Happiness cigarettes to bottles of imported liquor costing thousands, and from being unable to afford a Shaxian duck-leg rice meal to having a fortune of a hundred million, driving a Porsche, and surrounded by beautiful women.
Retail investors across the internet hail him as the “ETF Sweeping Monk” and the “Stock God of Shenzhen.” Only Jiang Chen knows the truth: he was never a trading genius, just a fake stock god with a golden finger.
At a celebration banquet, the old phone containing his golden finger is knocked onto the marble floor and smashed. Its motherboard is completely wrecked, and his ability to predict the market disappears forever.
Overnight, his private fund loses half its value, his brother runs off with the money, his lover disappears, his assets are seized, and he’s left with five million in debt.
Dragging a battered suitcase, he returns to the stairwell of the urban village where it all began: a tiny room costing 300 yuan a month, a cup of braised beef instant noodles, and a pack of seven-yuan Red Double Happiness cigarettes.
After a winding journey through a dream of sudden riches, he’s come full circle, back where he started.
There are no gods in the stock market. Money earned through luck will sooner or later be lost through incompetence.
