How 'Millionaire Yang' Became China's First Stock Trading Hero
From being a steel factory worker to China's first stock trading hero, here's the inspiring story of 'Millionaire Yang'.
Until 1988, Yang Huaiding was an unknown 40-year-old warehouse keeper at a Shanghai steel factory, earning about US$7.80 (51 yuan) per month back then.
Then all it took was one decision that turned out to be a life-changer for him, making him the first stock trading hero of his country China.
And today, Yang Huaiding is fondly remembered as ¡°Millionaire Yang¡± in the folklore of China¡¯s stock market.
CNS Photo
Also Read: This Is How The Japanese Stock Trader Turned $13k into $153 Million!
The Key Decisions & Journey
It was a rented ballroom at the Astor House Hotel where Yang scored some of his early stock winnings.
¡°I was confident that shares of Shanghai Vacuum Electron Device were a good buy at that time because they were undervalued based on the cash dividend stream,¡± said Yang, who bought thousands of shares in the state-owned television tube company at 80 yuan, and got out at 800 yuan before the stock hit 2,000 yuan.
It all began at the dawn of China¡¯s financial-market experiments in the late 1980s. Yang decided to pull together $8,000 to put into bonds that were more like bank IOUs, which is a written promise to pay back the owed money.
And he made his first million from dabbling in the initial batch of 8 stocks soon after the local bourse came into operation in December 1990, which prompted him to devote himself to full-time trading, as per SouthChinaMorningPost.
He said ¡°You could say the stock market offered me a new career path,¡± said Yang, who had experienced at least three boom-and-bust cycles ¨C the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the 2008 Lehman Brothers collapse, and the 2015 domestic market crash.
¡°Those hefty profits in the early days inspired me to make the switch¡± he added, in the SouthChinaMorningPost of 2020.
Yuan had become a celebrity after he earned more than 1 million yuan ($156,300) trading stocks in the late 1980s, a time when many Chinese only earned a meagre monthly salary.
Around 1993, Yang made his name known throughout China by successfully dodging the crash on the markets, as per GlobalTimes.
He had even organized a securities workshop in Shanghai where he taught many individual stock investors how to trade on the market, besides publishing a number of books on trading.
After the government¡¯s efforts to ramp up the infrastructure of the capital market since 2018, millionaire Yang said, ¡°Chinese retail investors will need to ¡®upgrade¡¯ too. The days when punters could get rich overnight on the casino-like local stock market are history¡±, as per the 2020's report in SouthChinaMorningPost.
He had further added ¡°To play it safe, I only buy into blue-chip stocks like banks now for stable returns¡± of about 10%. With my experience in trading, my advice to small investors is to buy on fundamentals and valuation or to invest in professionally-managed funds. Stock investing is a high-risk game.¡±
The millionaire Yang, also referred to as China's stock trading pioneer, died last year in June 2021, aged 70.
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