“Those people bought the shares … as an expression of support for the company,” Lai told Bloomberg TV in an interview Friday of the stock-buying frenzy that he warned against for fear people would lose money. “They knew that they would drop back … people just wanted to support us.”

Trading turnover in Lai’s stock last Monday climbed more than 140,000 per cent from Friday. Meanwhile, the share price of Most Kwai Chung, owner of the satirical 100Most magazine and video platform TVMost, rocketed up 204 per cent over last Monday and Tuesday. The share price of Oriental Press Group, owner of the Oriental Daily News, rose far less, about 11 per cent over the two days.

Like Most Kwai Chung and Next Digital, it saw a huge explosion in stock turnover at a time media stocks had been getting scant attention.

The rally in Next Digital spilling over to other small-cap media stocks sparked some speculation about whether their big shareholders would take advantage of it to pocket some gains. One Media Group, which owned a 7.5 per cent stake in satirical media outlet Most Kwai Chung, cut its holding by 3.06 per cent in two transactions last Tuesday and Wednesday for HK$12.3 million.

Lai, who owns a 71 per cent stake in Next Digital, said he would not sell his shares or issue new shares, during the Bloomberg interview.

A Shanghai trader calling himself Qian Duoduo on a digital platform was one of the traders that answered the call for support. A Shanghai resident who owns a software company, Qian bought 100,000 shares in Next Digital at HK$1.15. The value of his stake has shrunk by HK$75,000 so far. But he doesn’t mind.

“This is my most delightful investment. I entered with the preparation that it would all be gone, and this doesn’t have anything to do with making a return,” said Qian, who is experienced in trading US and Hong Kong stocks.

He considers the investment a “donation” to Apple Daily. “Wherever you are in this world, there will always be people who are sober, kind and brave. I just want to be a better person.”

He was one of the “salted fish” traders.

Salted fish are a mainstay of Cantonese eating, and can be seen hanging in neat rows above the entryways of Hong Kong dried seafood shops carrying on a pre-refrigeration era of preserving fish for eating later, bringing the fish back to “life” by steaming it, often over rice.

Lai’s salted fish tale is part of a popular style of stock trading in Hong Kong whose name is also part of the Cantonese world of food – stir frying.

A trader willing to gamble tosses his or her money into a stock’s wok, so to speak, where it mixes with the money being tossed in by others. If a trader gets the money out quickly enough, there is a delicious profit. Otherwise, the trader gets burned, as the stock’s price collapses as other traders sell.

Last week, stir fryers of many schools jacked up the price of Next Digital. Some were Lai allies, buying minimum lots to send a message rather than make a profit. Others just smelled a hot stir-frying opportunity starting and jumped in.

“I’d been paying attention to the stock for a while, and when I saw the noises on [Facebook] social media and the stock price started to pick up along with its turnover, I just decided to go in,” said Sammy Ting, a 40-year-old worker in the finance industry.

He bought 20,000 shares at about HK$0.20 and then sold them hours later at HK$0.35 on Monday afternoon. He ended with a HK$3,000 (about US$390) profit, just as the stock was about to take off.

“I’m very satisfied with what I’ve earned,“ he said. “I didn’t go in with the thought of becoming rich overnight, and I also feared that trading might be suspended. So I exited as soon as it hit my target.”

Hong Kong’s stock market boasts a diverse mix of investors, both in their geographical locations and sizes. Retail investors based in the city accounted for about 10 per cent of the market’s overall transaction in value, according to the latest survey by the Hong Kong stock exchange’s operator in 2019.

The rest are largely split between overseas institutional investors, who made up 35 per cent of the market, local institutions, who represented 20 per cent, and brokerages, at about 29 per cent. Trading by overseas retail investors stood at 6 per cent.

If large institutional investors are like elephants, making every move slowly and thoughtfully, then the group of amateur retail traders are the sparrows, surviving on their ability to move quickly and not be overly greedy.

Short-term speculative trading is hugely popular among those with strong nerves and a risk-taking bent.

These traders usually buy and sell one stock within just a few days or even a few minutes, betting on momentum – driven by such things as unexpected news or events – to draw a crowd until they get a whiff the ride is coming to an end and jump off.

03:11

Hong Kong opposition activist Agnes Chow and Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai released on bail

Hong Kong opposition activist Agnes Chow and Apple Daily founder Jimmy Lai released on bail

No deep thinking goes into it. No time-consuming reading of a company’s expected profits or annual reports to shareholders. No studying of technical indicators like death crosses or relative strength indicator readings. A successful trade only requires daring – and lots of luck – to grab hold of the upswing when people are just starting to pile in, and for the trader to be right on when to exit before everyone else cashes out and panic sets in.

Despite huge risks involved in “stir frying” stocks, the allure of making a quick buck remains strong, especially as the Covid-19 pandemic plunges the economy into a recession and also leaves people bored at home with easy and cheap access to trading through their smartphones.

“It’s getting harder and harder to make money in Hong Kong,” said Maddos Lau, chief consultant at Share News Media, which owns a handful of publications about stock trading. “The job you work and the business you own can be lost at any second in this age – just look at the restaurant industry. If you have some cash at hand, putting it into stocks is the only way to generate some income.”

Lau, who trades personally, invests both long and short-term. He said he has made thousands of dollars on his “stir-fry” strategy: Each morning during the auction session between 9am and 9.30am, he looks at the 10 stocks that jumped the most. He buys a few of them that had large turnover of at least HK$3 million, and then sells them by noon.

“I could make profits in 13 or 14 out of 20 trading days in a month,” he said. “I regularly made HK$5,000 gains in a day, when my principal was about HK$300,000.”

Unlike in the mainland, where stocks cannot be bought and sold on the same day, Hong Kong allows day trading.

“Some investors do it with a mindset of gambling,” said Sam Chi-yung, an independent market strategist in Hong Kong. “They like the feeling that their profit could rise 10 per cent in the next second.”

To be sure, “stir-frying” can be extremely dangerous and is widely discouraged by professional investors.

“This was my first time buying a stock, and I’ve bought myself an important lesson about the stock market,” an investor said in a post on the online stock trading platform Futubull. Another commented, “this is more thrilling than baccarat,” a popular, very quick card game at casinos that depends entirely on luck.

The key is to set a limit for how much losses one is willing to suffer, and sell as soon as the stock hits it, according to Ting, the finance industry worker, who adopts both “buy-and-hold” and “stir fry” strategies for his portfolio.

“I strictly cap the weight of short-term positions in my portfolio to be under 5 per cent,” said Ting, adding that work-from-home arrangement over the pandemic has allowed him to spend more time on the market. “I have also paid my fair share for lessons in the market in the past.”

Additional reporting by Deb Price