Chapter 4
Spreadtrum Communications
When the Chips Are Down
Not long after we moved into the big old hotel in the Rockies to spend the winter as caretakers, Danny started muttering something to himself over and over again, something that sounded like “Spreadtrum, Spreadtrum.”
Then one evening as an icy mist enshrouded the hotel grounds, Danny wrote the word in red marker on his hand and held it up to the mirror, and we realized, to our horror, that “Spreadtrum” was the mirror image of “MURDER.”
—Mark Gongloff, Wall Street Journal 1
Mark Gongloff’s satirical likening of the panic selling that hammered the stock of Spreadtrum Communications (NASDAQ:SPRD) in late June 2011 borrows imagery from the 1980 horror film classic, The Shining. The movie revolves around a boy, Danny, who comes under the spell of a visionary power, “the shining.” Danny’s mysterious acumen to perceive terrifyingly evil acts that escape the eyes of others ultimately saves him and his mother from an otherwise certain death at the hands of his murderously crazed father whose part (to give sufficient context to this opening epigraph) was memorably played with gusto by a master of the genre, Jack Nicholson.
After a streak of entirely unexpected but increasingly devastating short calls beginning in the summer of 2010, a 34-year-old American named Carson Block had gained in reputation as a “Danny” in regard to U.S.-listed Chinese stocks: a wunderkind capable of revealing the horrors of unscrupulous company management ...
