Next Digital, Hong Kong’s largest listed media firm, saw its shares nearly quintuple from trough-to-peak following the high-profile arrest of its founder and staunch critic of Beijing, Jimmy Lai.
Following Lai’s arrest, Next Digital shares fell 17 percent to a record-low of HK$0.075 before overruling resurgence led a rebound that peaked at HK$0.36 – a 480 percent trough-to-peak spike.
Next Digital shares rose as much as 344 percent between its opening price and peak before closing at HK0.255 to register a single-day gain of 183 percent.
Rally Sparked: Who?
Next Digital’s share turnover yesterday tore up to $393 million – a gargantuan difference compared to historical figures with no more than HK$1.5 million recorded in the last two months. And there are signs that the rally was fuelled by the average Joe rather than institutional money.
«Definitely it’s not institutional investors buying the stock,» said Steven Leung, executive director at UOB Kay Hian in Hong Kong, in a «Bloomberg» report. «I see many orders were placed via Futunn, a large portal for retail stock investors.»
Rally Sparked: Why?
Although some speculate that the spike was driven by the prospects of new leadership from a sale – also the same reason named by others as the reason for the 17 percent drop in the morning – the rally was widely believed to fuelled by investor activism and a showing of solidarity following Lai’s arrest.
An outpour of social media posts of popular influencers ranging from ex-politicians to amateur market commentators rushed online to show images of their orders with many claiming to donate the gains to pro-democracy or other social causes.
As of publishing, Hong Kong markets have re-opened and Next Digital shares have shot up from yesterday’s all-time low to a 5-year high of HK$0.69 – an over 9-fold increase.
