"Release the financial report directly?" John asked.
"No. Official announcements are too stiff. They leave no room for imagination." Donald was an old fox. "The news has to leak out through unofficial channels."
"The sneakier it is, the more those traders will believe it."
That night.
In an ICQ finance chat group with five hundred members.
The group owner was a modestly well-known independent analyst.
A large number of junior traders from hedge funds were lurking in the group.
Eleven o'clock at night.
An account that rarely spoke posted a screenshot.
There was no caption, only an image.
It was a rough screenshot of Silicon Valley Online's internal operations backend.
Clearly displayed on it were "Yesterday's total clicks: 124,500,890," along with a string of astonishing figures labeled "Estimated GG revenue for the month."
The screenshot existed for less than a minute.
That account withdrew the image, sent one line—"Sent to the wrong place, sorry."—and then left the group.
One minute was enough for those in the group with an eye for such things to save the image.
Someone had "secretly" "leaked" go.com's daily click count and GG revenue in an ICQ group chat, and by the next day it had reached retail investors' ears.
Richard was sitting in front of his computer drinking beer at the time.
He saw that image.
He enlarged it and stared at the GG revenue figure for a long time.
He had spent years in the financial world, and his sensitivity to numbers was extremely sharp.
"Even a money printer isn't this fast," Richard cursed.
He picked up the phone and called his broker.
"When the market opens tomorrow, liquidate all my Apple shares. Jobs and his Pixar may have made a fortune, but as long as he hasn't returned to Apple, Apple isn't worth