SHANGHAI: Liu Zhengtai (pic) became a stock-buying god while still a student at Fudan University in Shanghai, boasting of 1,000 per cent returns as he debated on television with the country’s best-known market analysts about how to make quick cash.

Liu rode the investment boom that kicked off in late 2014, with people begging him for tips. When the market dived last summer, he disappeared from public only to re-emerge in September, and he continues to manage his investment fund.