Back to 2005: Starting at 998 Points

June 6, 2005. The Shanghai Composite Index: 998.23 points.

After three years of a bear market, the index had fallen below 1,000. Newspapers said the A-share market needed to start over, and people cried every day in brokerage offices.

Thirty-nine-year-old Chen Jianghai died in 2026. His mentor had framed him, leaving him to serve three years in prison under the accusation of insider trading. After his release, his marriage and family fell apart, and he eventually died after a leveraged position was liquidated in his rented room in an urban village.

When he opened his eyes again, he was back on June 6, 2005. He was twenty-two, a brokerage clerk, with all of 13,400 yuan to his name.

And this was the most desperate market bottom in A-share history, at 998 points.

He knew every step that followed: the tidal wave of the share-structure reform, the frenzied bull market that surged to 6,124, the 2008 crash, the four-trillion-yuan stimulus, and the leveraged bull run and thousands of stocks hitting their daily limits down in 2015...

In his previous life, he couldn't understand the market, and it devoured everything he had.

This time, he would personally win back everything he had lost, including the man who smiled as he taught him to read stock charts, then stabbed him in the back.

Starting with 13,000 yuan, he would go from clerk to retail investor, major investor, hot-money trader, private equity manager, and finally to managing a trillion-yuan fortune.

This is the story of a man with foresight returning to the market's lowest point.

It is also the story of someone betrayed by the market, learning to respect it all over again.

(This story is entirely fictional and does not constitute investment advice.)