Chapter 201： gold and silver

After staying at Bell Labs for a week, Bao Zixuan has both money and dreams. Yule Engel joined Heiyun Mobile with his technical team. And as the chief engineer of the mobile phone R&D department, his assistants have also made proper arrangements.

At the same time, Bao Zixuan also purchased the UNIX operating system and charge-coupled components at Bell Labs for patent licensing of barcode readers, cameras, scanners, copiers and other products. These technologies are now relatively common technologies on the market, so the price is not very expensive. But whoever wants to produce it must also buy a patent at Bell Labs. This laboratory is so powerful, and it is so profound that it is impossible to see the edge.

After arranging the research and development of mobile phones, Bao Zixuan came to New York again. The employees of the Blackstone Fund are on vacation, and a new round of feasts is about to begin. This time he's going to take on silver and gold, and it's the best chance for decades to come.

Before 1980, the Hunt family was once among the richest families in the world; today its status has declined, but it is still not to be underestimated. The founder of the family, H.L. Hunter was born in rural Illinois in 1889, the youngest child in the family. His parents ran a farm and came from a relatively wealthy family, but he had no formal education since he was a child. In 1912, the 23-year-old Hunter began to operate cotton plantations in Arkansas; World War I brought the price of agricultural products (8.000, -0.89, -10.01%) up, and Hunter earned his first pot of gold.

In 1957, Fortune magazine estimated that H.L. With a fortune of $400 million to $700 million, Hunt was one of the eight richest people in America at the time. The second-generation Hunter family members did not sit still and looked for new investment opportunities: Nielsen-Hunter was committed to developing Libyan oil fields, but the political unrest in Libya later led to the seizure of the oilfields, and the potential investment losses could be as high as $4 billion; Rowling Hunter opened the hotel and hotel group and served as chairman; Rama Hunter participated in the formation of the North American Football League and the North American Football League, and named the annual football finals "Super Bowl" Swanney-Hunter served as the U.S. ambassador to Austria and taught at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. It can be said that the influence of the Hunter family on the political economy of the United States has penetrated into the lives of most people.

Soybeans were one of the most important U.S. exports in the early 1970s. It is not only widely used in feed and edible oil production, but also on the American table. In the summer of 1973, soaring demand for soybeans even knocked out soybeans, and the government was forced to suspend soybean exports—a rare treat for an agricultural product that isn’t a staple. Everyone in government and corporations is talking about soy. Since this commodity is so popular and so in short supply, wouldn't it be a perfect target?

So Nelson-Hunter began to use the power of the entire family to speculate on soybeans. Soon, he will confront the US government for the first time, and this confrontation is only a preview of the silver crisis of 1980.

In 1973, Nelson-Hunter began buying spot silver in the Middle East, while buying silver futures in the futures markets in New York and Chicago. This decision was very strategic, and the Hunts seized the last moments of calm before silver prices rose, building large positions at the bottom. In December 1973, the Hunts had purchased $20 million worth of spot silver and 35 million ounces of silver futures at a cost of $2.9 an ounce, making them one of the largest silver holders in the world .

In the summer of 1979, Nelson Hunter finally launched the attack. He's going to give the slow-rising silver price one last push and make it blowout like gold. One of the biggest tragedies in the history of commodity futures has finally officially kicked off.

In the summer of 1979, the duel between the Hunter family and silver dealers around the world began. Nielsen-Hunter, through the International Metals Investment Corporation, which he controls, placed a cumulative 40 million ounces of buy orders on futures exchanges in New York and Chicago. "International Metal Investment Corporation" actually has only two groups of shareholders, the first group is the Hunter family, and the second group is the Saudi prince and the rich. If you can't understand the nature of this investment company, you can think about the ownership structure of "Blackstone" - a greedy board of directors plus a foreign exchange investor from a developing country, this is the routine of the "International Metal Investment Corporation" back then.

Nelson Hunter and his brother William Hunter completed purchase orders through a number of Wall Street brokers, including large investment banks such as Hilson and Bage. People found that there was huge buying in the market, and the price of silver quickly rose from $6 to $11, but no one knew who was buying. The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission examined the trading records and found that most of the purchases came from “International Metals Investment Corporation,” a Bermuda-registered company. After a closer investigation, the Hunter family's fox tail was finally revealed. Soon, every trader in New York and Chicago knew that the Hunts were the backstage owners of the International Metal Investment Corporation, one of the richest families in the world!

Interestingly, when the news spread that the Hunter family was manipulating silver, the price of silver continued to soar, and many small speculators flooded into the market. The reason is very simple. Since the Hunter family is "making a banker" for silver, then of course small speculators should choose to "follow the banker". Although this is very dangerous, it has a chance to make a lot of money. With the influx of speculators, the price of silver went crazy - from $11 to $20, then $30, and by the end of 1979 it broke $40! The ratio of gold to silver fell to around 12 times, a record low. The futures market has completely lost its grip on silver. When will it end?

Large futures traders in Chicago and New York were concerned about the Hunts' monopoly. At the end of 1979, the Hunt family manipulated 53% of the silver futures contracts on the New York Mercantile Exchange and 69% of the silver futures contracts on the Chicago Board of Trade, holding a total of 120 million ounces of cash and 50 million ounces of futures -- and that's not counting Silver held by those Saudi Arabian investors in their personal names. At that time, the global silver trading volume was only about 20 million ounces per year, and the Hunt family had cut off the channel of silver circulation! The largest grain trader of the Chicago Exchange Commission said a very classic sentence: "We would rather let the BY market fail than see it being monopolized." It seems that the Hunter family has already offended the public, and the big domestic traders in the United States have stood on the opposite side of them.

Silver producers around the world were so excited about this, they quickly started a plan to find new silver mines, and many silver mines that had long been closed were reopened. Ordinary residents in the United States and Europe were also pleasantly surprised by the rise in silver prices. They rummaged through boxes and found ancestral silver tea utensils and ornaments. Any utensils with silver as a raw material were sent for smelting without hesitation and made into standard silver. block to the market to sell. As a result, the supply of silver on the market increased, and the Hunt family's efforts to monopolize the price of silver were challenged. Although Nelson Hunter tried his best to keep buying, he was already a little powerless-no matter how huge the Hunter family's wealth was, it would still be a bit overpowering to be the enemy of the whole world Moreover, the Hunter family is the largest The enemy has not yet shot, this enemy is the US government. The U.S. government holds a large amount of silver, including silver bullion for the Federal Reserve and silver coins recovered after its early issuance, which may total tens of millions of ounces. The central banks of the world also hold a large amount of silver reserves. Although it is impossible for any central bank to hold more silver than the Hunter family, as long as they jointly intervene in the market, the Hunter family will die without a place to die.

By January 1980, the Hunter family had already achieved great results—the price of silver had risen to $48 and was climbing toward $50; most of the short traders who were enemies of the Hunter family had already conceded losses, and then No one dared to sell short on a large scale. However, the Hunter family is also under heavy pressure, because the price of silver is too high, and the capital held by the Hunter family has been difficult to continue to raise the price. In order to maintain a monopoly on the BY market, Nielsen-Hunter was forced to borrow at high interest rates from several major banks in the United States, with an average interest rate as high as 19%. Several investment banks on Wall Street also lent heavily to the Hunts, allowing them to continue playing the game of market manipulation for the time being.

According to an investigation by the U.S. Commodity Exchange Commission, in the winter of 1979, the total value of silver futures contracts held by the Hunter family was as high as $3 billion; by January 1980, the total value may exceed $5 billion! Within two months from the end of 1979 to the beginning of 1980, the Hunt family loaned tens of millions of dollars to major banks in the United States and more than 200 million dollars from Wall Street brokers, almost becoming the largest borrower in the United States and even the world. . They cost millions of dollars a month just to pay interest, and manipulating silver has become a money-burning game, even more so than war.

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