Interesting trading experience in China!

When I was in Shanghai several weeks ago, I stayed in a budget hotel where there is limited Internet access. The bandwidth for the whole 5-story hotel is only 2MB. What makes it worse is that the Internet connection is not stable. But at the end I managed to solve the problem and won several hundreds dollars. It is a quite interesting experience.

Nov 11, 2007. 9PM. I returned to the hotel (by the way, the hotel is Rujia Kuaijie) and tried to warm up (read news, etc.) before the market opens. I planned to sell two option positions (Dolby Laboratories and PriceLine.com, DLB/PCLN) that I had held. Actually I had to close my positions and get out the market at the market's opening. I tried to login my account. To my surprise, I could not login because of the unstable Internet connection and the limited bandwidth (many people were accessing the Internet at that point of time). I was very worried. What can I do? I remember there is a Internet bar nearby. I packed my notebook and rushed to the Internet bar. I was very disappointed to find out that the company does not allow me to use my personal computer to access the Internet even if I am willing to pay.

I had no choice but to go back to my hotel and. The market was open already and I completely had no idea whether the stock price is going up or down. I talked to the IT technician and told him that I may lose a lot of money if you can not solve my problem (I did not threaten to ask him to compensate me if I lose :D ). Obviously he could not help much because he told me it was the problem of Netcom, the Internet Service Provider.

I was about to give up when he surprisingly decided to cut the Internet access of other guests and only allow me to use the Internet. Of course, I was very glad (I guess he knows that other guests won't complain. The Internet access is not stable anyway). You guess what? It worked this time! (I think the other staff felt happy also because she wanted to know how to buy/sell stocks in the US stock market ^-^ ). It was 10:30 PM then. I quickly logged in and luckily, the share price of these two companies were going up. I closed my positions and made some good money (I bought DLB for 1.7 and sold @ 5. I bought PCLN for 2.9 and sold @ 5.7). It is a good feeling. The two hotel staff who helped me were happy as well (They know I will not complain any more. haha).

It is a good experience that I think I will remember forever.