Just two days after its market debut, Shengu Group has delivered a dizzying display of speculative trading, with its share price rocketing from an issue price of 4.39 yuan to a staggering intraday high of 82.59 yuan—a surge of over 20 times. The stock's tiny free-float, combined with rapid-fire trading by hot money, has triggered violent price swings, leading market wags to dub the machinery maker "Shengu" the "God stock." Within just 48 hours, the stock was pushed to extreme levels, halts were repeatedly triggered, and tales of instant wealth spread like wildfire across social media.

This isn't a story of a company's fundamentals transforming overnight; it's a textbook eruption of the A-share market's long-standing culture of hyping new listings. Shengu Group is a solid manufacturing enterprise with stable earnings and measurable asset value. But at its debut, with a scarcity of tradable shares, a relatively small amount of speculative capital could easily manipulate the price, detaching it from any fundamental basis. The rally was driven purely by sentiment, buzzwords, and a small-cap advantage.

This new-stock game is essentially a zero-sum contest. Retail investors who pile in at the peak often become the final bag holders. A meteoric rise is almost always followed by a sharp correction; yesterday's wealth miracle can be today's gap-down open. Traders who saw paper profits of hundreds of thousands of yuan can see their account balances evaporate in an instant. Hot money exploits the trading rules of a stock's early listing phase to quickly ramp up the price and then distribute shares at lofty levels. Retail investors are lured by the explosive gains narrative, chase the rally, and ultimately suffer heavy losses as the stock price retreats.

Beneath this phenomenon lies the longstanding issue with IPO pricing and the share allocation system. Before a new stock lists, its shares are concentrated in the hands of institutional investors offline. This results in an extremely thin float during the initial listing period, making it highly susceptible to manipulation. Those who secure cheap shares in the primary market cash out huge profits upon listing by fueling market excitement, while ordinary investors in the secondary market are left to gamble on a bubble at elevated prices. This severe imbalance between primary and secondary market returns has cemented the "subscription equals guaranteed profit" expectation, perpetuating a cycle of speculative fervor.

The market's focal point has gradually shifted from investing in enterprise value to gaming the spread on chips. Fewer people are seriously studying a company's products, cash flow, or long-term competitiveness. The focus is almost entirely on float size, the heat of the theme, and the potential for limit-up days. Capital is no longer patient enough to support the growth of real businesses; instead, it's obsessed with the quick riches of a listing day, fostering a pervasive atmosphere of restless speculation.

The original purpose of a company going public is to use the capital market to raise funds for expanding production, investing in R&D, and strengthening its core business. Yet when the market's attention is completely captivated by the first-day price surge, the company's operating fundamentals are relegated to the background. New stocks become short-term trading vehicles, and the capital market's function of resource allocation becomes distorted. The false prosperity created by a stock surge generates no real economic growth; it simply transfers wealth between different groups of investors.

Bubbles always burst. When the tide goes out, the prices of hyped new stocks usually revert to their true value. Many ordinary investors who were drawn in by the promise of striking it rich will pay a heavy price. To break the cycle of new-stock speculation in the A-share market, institutional adjustments are needed: optimize the IPO allocation mechanism to favor small and medium-sized retail investors, balancing the distribution of chips between the primary and secondary markets; refine the trading constraints during the initial listing phase to reduce the space for easy manipulation of small-cap new stocks; and anchor IPO pricing to fundamentals to eliminate the illusion of "risk-free, get-rich-quick" subscriptions.

The true value of a capital market is not in creating overnight millionaires. A healthy market should reward long-term value investment and support real businesses in their steady operations, rather than indulging short-term speculative capital and manufacturing enormous stock price bubbles. The extreme price action in Shengu Group serves as another stark warning: this frenzied game of new-stock speculation is nothing more than a game of musical chairs. When the tide recedes, those swimming naked will be exposed. The cautionary tale of Unitree Robotics should be heeded, and the speculative frenzy in Shengu Group demands deep reflection. Only by shattering the "never-lose" IPO myth and reforming every aspect of the market can the A-share market secure a sound future.