33: Free air

The next moment, dense, complex data appeared on the blank page of the notebook.

He Ming expressionlessly raised his wrist and aimed his watch at the page.

All the information on the page was quickly recorded by jarvis through the watch's camera and organized into complete data... "Begin."

He Ming closed the notebook and spoke calmly.

The moment the command was issued, a precise hunt, led by a digital phantom, quietly began in the deep sea of the global financial market.

jarvis simultaneously controlled tens of thousands of globally distributed real-name accounts, systematically selling the Verlander stocks held by He Ming.

These sell orders were broken down into extremely fragmented pieces, like turning a cup of water into mist and scattering it into the ocean.

The pace of selling was strictly controlled. Whenever the stock price showed a significant downward trend, jarvis would slightly slow the selling, even using small amounts of capital to prop up the price, keeping the stock oscillating at a high level.

Due to the continuous positive news surrounding Verlander recently, countless buyers were taking the shares, and the stocks held by He Ming were quickly cashed out at a high price.

To ordinary investors, this operation appeared to be nothing more than normal profit-taking at a high point.

But the true killing move was hidden beneath this fog.

Simultaneously with this systematic selling, another completely independent system was activated.

Using the capital recovered from the sales, jarvis began simultaneously building massive short positions through futures and options instruments with ten times leverage.

The brilliance here lay in jarvis using the selling pressure it created to stabilize the stock price.

The purpose of this was to ensure the short positions wouldn't hit the liquidation line due to a short-term rise, allowing them to safely pass through the most dangerous build-up period.

This was like pulling bricks from the roof on one side while temporarily supporting the rafters with props on the other, until all the explosives were set.

He Ming was unfamiliar with Earth's financial rules.

But on Azure Star, short selling was not simply betting on a decline.

It was an expensive gamble.

The operator needed to pay a huge margin as performance collateral and pay high daily interest on the borrowed stock to the brokerage, like paying rent for a borrowed weapon.

For every transaction completed, regardless of profit or loss, a certain fee had to be paid to the exchange and the brokerage.

In this zero-sum game, brokerages were the eternal winners.

They were like the owners of the gladiatorial arena; whether the gladiators lived or died in the duel, ticket sales and weapon rental fees brought them immense profits.

The core mechanism for profiting from short selling was selling high and buying low.

However, there were also huge risks involved; short selling was a bet on the decline.

If the stock rose in a short period, positions must be supplemented, and this lost money was equivalent to the ammunition reserved by the short seller.

Once the ammunition was depleted and the liquidation line was hit, it meant the invested money was completely lost, and the investor might even incur massive debts.

Because liquidation takes time, during that period, whatever the stock gained, the investor lost.

Assuming Verlander's stock price collapsed, jarvis would only need to use a few hundred billion, or even less, to buy back an equivalent amount of stock and return it to the brokerage.

The massive difference in price, minus interest and transaction fees, would be pure profit.

So, who was losing money? The answer was obvious.

All the investors who took over the chips thrown out by jarvis when Verlander's stock price was at its peak.

Retail investors and funds who were bullish on the Dawn Project and bought frantically.

And the major financial backers propping up Verlander behind the scenes.

Their wealth would be completely devoured by the short sellers when the avalanche hit.

jarvis was an AI ahead of its time; it could apply this complex set of financial rules with divine skill, turning the market's own emotions and fluctuations into part of its chess game.

This was nothing short of a dimensionality reduction attack.

At 3 AM, on the world's largest financial forum, an anonymous post published by jarvis quietly appeared.

The title was [A Technician's Concern: Is There Statistical Bias in the Clinical Data of Verlander's Dawn Project?].

The content contained no emotional attacks, but instead cited several professional data points from the public report, raising several technical questions in a rigorous tone, seemingly seeking discussion.

This seed of doubt, disguised as academia, was physically pushed to the top by jarvis using thousands of puppet accounts within minutes.

It was marked by the system as [Extremely Valuable] and promoted to the trending section, quickly entering the field of vision of wide-ranging night owl investors.

Once the seed sprouted, public opinion began to spread rampantly.

On major social media platforms worldwide, more revelations followed, forming a tiered public opinion strike.

An account named [Former Project Team Member Who Wishes Not to Be Named] vaguely mentioned that management had pressured the raw data results.

A tweet from a blogger named [Independent Analyst], who appeared out of nowhere with tens of millions of zombie followers, began to question whether Verlander's recent cash flow could sustain the subsequent investment and research for the Dawn Project.

Some posts began comparing the early characteristics of other famous historical tech scams, implicitly including Verlander in the comparison.

This information was a mix of true and false, and the sources seemed scattered, but the core all pointed in the same direction: Verlander's perfect image might have cracks.

A virus named panic was injected into the market's bloodstream by jarvis in a precisely calculated dose.

When the market opened that day, Verlander's stock price gapped up due to inertial optimism, but buyers soon discovered an invisible, heavy pressure above.

jarvis began actively using the stock chips it held to place medium-sized sell orders at key price points, precisely suppressing every attempt at a rebound.

The high-level oscillation curve created a market pattern on the trading screen that signaled weak upward momentum.

The theoretical limit value of Verlander Biotechnology stock was perfectly disguised by jarvis through precise manipulation.

It was precisely within this cloud of doubt and weak market atmosphere, personally manufactured by jarvis, that the true killing move was launched.

Tens of thousands of real-name accounts began acting in response to market sentiment.

They left comments under the popular negative posts. [The OP is smart, I'm running first.]

This was immediately followed by a small short-selling transaction.

It was as if a real, flesh-and-blood person was performing the operation.

Some accounts posted on social platforms. [Verlander risk is too high, shorting to hedge.]

The corresponding account then established a put option.

Their actions appeared extremely scattered.

Some accounts closed their positions immediately after making a small profit. Others continued to increase their stakes.

jarvis's god-like operation perfectly simulated the behavioral patterns of speculative retail investors and small-scale hot money in the market.

To everyone, these suddenly appearing short orders were just a reasonable reaction by the market to negative news.

No one would have thought that the people spreading the news, the invisible hand suppressing the stock price, and the army of short-selling retail investors originated from the same consciousness.

Wall Street District. An office of a private equity fund.

"Zhou Xuan, quick, look at this trend."

Zhou Xuan leaned over, looking at the stock chart of Verlander Biotechnology.

After peaking at a market capitalization of five trillion USD, the stock price entered a high-frequency oscillation range.

Whenever the decline was slightly larger, it was quickly pulled back up.

"See that?"

Shen Lin pointed at the screen with his pen, a smile of apparent omniscience playing on his lips.

He leaned back in his chair, triumphantly gesturing like a grand strategist.

"This kind of high-level oscillation is probably a trap set by the real financial behemoths in the Wall Street District; they are clearing out the uncommitted bulls."

"They are luring retail investors who know nothing but follow the trend into shorting."

"Once these idiots accumulate enough short orders, it will be a perfect short squeeze, swallowing them whole, flesh and bone."

Zhou Xuan nodded in deep agreement.

"Brother Lin's analysis is spot on. The real hunters have already set the trap, just waiting for those fools to step into the pit."

Shen Lin picked up his coffee and took two large sips. His entire posture exuded immense confidence.

"I've staked my entire fortune, and I even took out a massive loan using my house and car as collateral."

"Hmph... Only by following the right trend can one truly achieve a complete class leap."

His words were filled with disdain for his domestic counterparts.

"When I graduated from Jiaotong University back then, the offers those domestic institutions gave me were simply insulting."

"Only here can you understand what true capital operation is, and only here can you personally participate in this feast of global harvesting."

"Oscillation is the process of wealth redistribution. I am certain that Verlander's stock price will soon break new highs and move up another level."

"Those cowards who ran away, and those short sellers who thought they were clever, will all become stepping stones for Shen Lin."

Zhou Xuan echoed, "That's right, only here can we breathe the air of freedom."