Investment Life

1994 was not a wonderful year for Wall Street. Just after waking up from the dream of attacking old Europe, it fell headfirst on the continent of Europe. The two consecutive European foreign exchange battles in 6 and 1992 made the major hedge funds in the United States make a lot of money. The European bond market in 1993 even enriched the pockets of countless financiers.As a result, in 1993, in order to strengthen the economy and curb inflation, the Federal Reserve announced a 1994 basis point rate hike. This mild adjustment to the stock market led to a collapse in the bond market.

No one could have predicted this crash, and no one could even explain the cause of the crash. All the brokers knew that the bonds in their hands fell to the bottom overnight, and there was a crazy sell-off on the exchange. A penny, as turbulent as it came, hedge funds withdrew from Europe.In just two months, the entire U.S. securities market evaporated 6 billion U.S. dollars, and 9 billion U.S. dollars were destroyed in foreign bond markets. The short-term godfather Michael Steinhardt lost as much as 13 billion U.S. dollars. Bankers Trust was on the verge of collapse.

In this catastrophic change known as "Hurricane Greenspan", few people escaped to heaven, and the whole Wall Street was gloomy. The fund instantly became a street rat and was criticized by everyone.However, this kind of disaster and change is not a bad thing for Chen Yuanming.

In mid-May, Chen Yuanming returned to Wall Street and applied for a short-term low-interest loan at Citibank, where he saved money.At this time, major commercial banks were affected by venture capital and hedge funds, and fell into a round of losses. Although it was not as miserable as Goldman Sachs, it was not much better.Bad credit is like a noose around the necks of commercial banks, making them breathless and nervous. Therefore, commercial loans have entered a short-term tightening period. If you want to borrow from banks, you need a very high credit rating.

And what about Chen Yuanming?He is indeed a very credible lender.After reviewing his bank accounts, the shares of Feiyan and Eagle Nest, as well as Golden Stone and its 7 or 8 venture capital projects, Citibank gave him the highest credit rating .It is a good thing for the bank to have a very reliable lender in such a time of turmoil.Therefore, using his own assets as collateral, Chen Yuanming easily applied for a loan of up to 1.5 million US dollars from Citibank for a period of 6 months at an interest rate of just over 4%.

Since Feiyan was involved in this loan, Yan Qiaosen of course also heard the news, full of surprise, he called Chen Yuanming who was far away in New York, and asked him why he wanted to borrow such a large sum of money. Do you need money urgently?Chen Yuanming just smiled and gave him two words, "futures".

Yes, this year was a nightmare disaster for the bond market, but for another trading field, it was completely different.In the mid-9s, due to the drastic changes in the world pattern, the futures trading of gold, silver and oil fell into a trough, but the trading of relative metals, especially the trading of copper and aluminum, reached a peak.This is not only due to the dual impacts of the disintegration of the Soviet Union and China's economic boom, but also because of the black-box operations of financial giants.

What happened during this period will be mentioned in detail in any futures textbook in later generations. Just one year later, the Sumitomo incident that shocked the world happened.

As one of Japan's super-large conglomerates, the Sumitomo Group, which once ranked 5nd in the world's top 22, once controlled part or all of the shares of many copper mines and smelters in countries such as Chile and the Philippines. Zhongtainan is also a well-known "Mr. 5.00%" in the copper futures industry. He has established a large number of copper forward contracts in the futures market and controls more than 5% of the trading volume and open interest contracts in the London copper market. Sumitomo can be called a giant crocodile in metal trading.

But this giant crocodile was restless.

From the end of 1993 to the beginning of 1995, due to the strong trading operation of Tainan Binzhong, the copper price once soared from about 16 US dollars / ton to the peak of 3 US dollars / ton, and the Lme copper warehouse receipts controlled by him accounted for 75% of the exchange at the highest point As many as it is, it occupies the throne of the world's copper trade.However, such a terrible figure has long violated the normal value of goods. Hamanaka Tainan himself was warned twice by the London Metal Exchange. Unexpectedly, the price of copper rose instead of falling, and it completely became a pure numbers game. Mr. Hammer's Japanese men are simply arrogant.

However, there is always more than one big crocodile in the financial world. Faced with such a high price that is extremely contrary to the market rules, the others showed their fangs as expected.Quantum Fund, Tiger Fund, Canadian metal trader Herbert B1ack, American fund deanwitter, and some large European metal traders responded and began to short copper prices. Sumitomo used its own strength to resist the squeeze of these huge forces until the end of 1995. Both the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the London Metal Exchange investigated the violations of Sumitomo Group, and the copper price began to drop, but the tug-of-war continued for half a year. It was not until mid-1996 that copper prices plummeted by 6%, and Sumitomo Group lost 4 billion US dollars. end.

This incident can be said to be the most magnificent scene in the mid-9s futures market. Even Soros' Quantum Fund failed to withstand the pressure and returned home on the eve of the decisive battle. Huge profits.At the same time, the soaring price of copper also drove up the price of aluminum. It can be said that these two have saved some financial giants who had suffered huge losses in the bond market.

When reading relevant materials in the early years, Chen Yuanming was not overwhelmed by the ups and downs of the situation. Now that a great opportunity is in front of him, how can he bear to let it go.As early as March when the U.S. bond market collapsed, he had already started to pay attention to changes in copper prices. In mid-April, the securities market initially stabilized. At the end of April, those hedge funds and investment banks with heavy losses began to look for new profit points. In early May, copper prices began to climb.At the same time, the price of aluminum is steadily rising amid the worldwide production cuts. This series of price changes has all verified the correctness of the information in the previous life's books. For this wave of short-term profits as high as 3%, he must give it a go!

After getting the loan, according to the size of the market, Chen Yuanming established a copper position at a price of 19 US dollars / ton, and bought a long position of 5 million US dollars.At the same time, it entered the metal aluminum market at a price of 1 US dollars / ton, and bought a long position of 1375 million US dollars.The rest of the money was invested in Cisco and Microsoft stocks, especially Microsoft's disk.Now that Windows 5 has not yet been released, and Microsoft's stock price has not yet started to soar, it is an excellent time to get in. Chen Yuanming bought 95 Microsoft shares with 1 million US dollars, and Cisco shares are not that big. It was the bottom of the valley, and the acquisition of 5% of the shares was completed with only 3 million US dollars.

Such an astonishing handwriting shocked a group of people. Yan Qiaosen, Meng Lisheng, and even Jonathan called to inquire, but Chen Yuanming didn't say much, and couldn't even explain in depth.Not to mention the vicissitudes of the futures market, even the Internet explosion in the next 6 or 7 years is something that most people cannot predict or believe.In the past few years on the eve of 2, almost without exception, the technology stocks listed on Nasdaq have created several-fold increases, and those giants and influential figures at the forefront of the times have created a miracle of a thousand-fold increase.

For this immeasurable profit, Chen Yuanming is not tempted, but the shortage of funds makes him tired of dealing with it, and there is another very important point, he cannot easily get involved in these real giants, even if he is rich.Nationality means that he cannot intervene in the core high-tech industries of the United States at all, nor can he dictate to these behemoths that are related to people's livelihood.Technical barriers are like a strong wall, which curbs the flow of technology between developed and developing countries, and also makes developing countries, including China, suffer for technological innovation.In the near future, countless failed mergers and acquisitions will give Chinese people a head-on blow, making them realize the necessity and urgency of independent innovation.

This kind of terrible obstacle is not something he can easily jump over as a small person, so increasing angel investment is his best, even the only choice.This is a real wasteland. Those emerging companies like seedlings are the existence that the U.S. government will not intervene in today, and they are also blind spots in the vision of those giants. They use a small amount of funds to support their start and implant their own forces in the early stage. Delineate the scope that can be occupied, and slowly eat away like this. What he can get will be a brand new forest, and the fertile soil bred by relying on this batch of forest will also become the root of his blood transfusion to China. The vitality that cannot be stuck.

When these dense forests really mature, the Internet bubble era will come. At that time, Silicon Valley will experience a real catastrophe. A large number of elite talents will face unemployment, and a large number of potential companies will either go bankrupt or be merged. It will fall into a truly painful cleansing and reorganization, adding incalculable nutrients to those giants and establishing their dominance.At this time, he can gather talents who are beneficial to China like picking vegetables with reduced prices in supermarkets. It was not until 2 that the United States once again tightened the export of software and high-tech products to China. Before that, he There's still too much time, isn't there?

After a series of intensive operations, it was not until the end of June that Chen Yuanming completed his layout on Wall Street. Since stocks can be held for a long time, and futures are semi-annual, they don't need much attention at all.Golden Stone Company finally ushered in steady development after several months of running-in. Regarding Chen Yuanming's investment direction, several competent general partners also reached a consensus, and the pressure on Chen Yuanming naturally eased.

The burden on this side is lightened, so I have the energy to look around other.At this time, Yan Qiaosen's studio had already launched the mpeg-2 format, and obtained the corresponding patents and qualifications through the demonstration of the mpeg forum, which became the standard of the next generation compression format.However, this new compression mode cannot be extended to the application. At present, the optical disc media still has defects, and there are obvious deficiencies in capacity and logical partitions, which cannot meet the needs of mpeg-2.

Since the acquisition of the first optical disc studio, it took only half a year for the company to make a major innovation in the dye layer of the optical disc. The blue disk made of metallized azo dyes has significantly improved the anti-photosensitivity and read/write stability of the optical drive. After a period of testing, this product has been officially put into production.Feiyan quickly improved the optical disc production line in Shantou. With the downstream production capacity, it is believed that blue discs will soon replace green discs and become the mainstream of the market.

This improvement alone is enough to have a major impact on an industry, but the innovation needed for the next generation of optical discs is far from being as simple as surface coating. After careful consideration, Zero Hour adjusted its strategic layout and tightened its research and development lines. Abandoned further research and development on the read and write speed of optical drives, and devoted energy to the improvement of optical disc media and laser heads.

In the eyes of outsiders, this kind of research and development direction that puts the cart before the horse is the key. Over the past few months, improvements to optical disc technology have emerged one after another, and now it has steadily entered the threshold of the next era. You must know that at this time, there are not only people who are holding back their energy to develop the next generation of optical discs. The zero-hour family, not to mention the Sony-Philips alliance, even Toshiba has entered the battle, joining hands with Time Warner to secretly exert force.Therefore, breaking through technical barriers as soon as possible and achieving results is the key to everything.

Now standing in the zero hour workshop, Chen Yuanming picked up the CD in front of him and looked at it carefully.

"This is the new disc you developed."

From the outside, this disc is no different from ordinary CD discs. They are all 12cm round discs with a single-sided structure. The dye used is not the blue disc that Feiyan mass-produces now, but pure white gold.

"That's right!" Yan Qiaosen nodded, the expression on his face could be called excited, "Don't think it looks like a CD, but its function is completely different! The idea is similar to what you mentioned before, using two layers of o .6mm matrix layer, the laser head uses red laser technology with a more concentrated focal length, which can accurately position and focus on the disc, and the minimum pit length is also reduced by half compared with the original CD's o.834μm. The pitch is only 74μm, and the surface coating is titanium blue..."

A lot of technical terms came crashing down like an avalanche, and Chen Yuanming looked at him dumbfounded, "Professor Yan, let me tell you the important point..."

"Cough..." Suddenly realizing that the other party is a layman without any foundation, Yan Qiaosen coughed lightly in embarrassment, "In short, it meets the basic requirements of the hdVagroup organization, but the effect is not very stable, and the corresponding player development needs longer."

"That's okay." The topic finally changed to a level that he could understand, Chen Yuanming smiled, "Now that we have finished products, what we need to do now is to stabilize the technical standards and publish the format specifications in the name of Feiyan. It is necessary to communicate well with News Corporation, and it is easier to gain a foothold in joint publishing. Also, we need to continue to develop anti-theft measures. Only one css is not enough. We also need some functions that can prevent CD-ROMs from being read, and VCRs from stealing copies. .Nowadays the competition among the three major groups is not only the quality of the optical disc, but the anti-theft is even more important than the capacity issue..."

Yan Qiaosen nodded while listening, "Then what about the development of the optical drive? Do you want to restart..."

"Of course. And the rewritable function can be given up. This kind of flashy video tape function is no longer suitable for optical discs. The key is to grasp the burning and reading and writing speed. This aspect can be dominated by Zero Time, and the development of the player is directly Leave it to Feiyan's technical department, after all, we have accumulated a lot of experience in developing VCD machines, and the patent right for this cannot be easily handed over to News Corporation..."

In this way, the two sat in the office talking about various matters surrounding the new generation of CDs until the sun went down. They didn't wake up at the same time until a stomach grunt sounded in protest.

"It's all because of Silicon Valley's temper..." Yan Qiaosen laughed, he was used to working overtime, and his stomach was used to being hungry, but the boy in front of him obviously hadn't learned this trick yet. "Let's go, I'm treating guests today, let's celebrate!"

Chen Yuanming rubbed his stomach in embarrassment, he would not lose to anyone in terms of overtime and staying up late, but recently his body has developed too fast, and his consumption can't keep up, but he smiled relieved after just a moment, "Okay, but let's talk first, Can't eat steak, now this guy can't afford to wait..."

"Haha, that's easy to say. There is a fast food restaurant next to it. I spend it there every day. I know it very well." Yan Qiaosen pushed his glasses on the bridge of his nose, stood up, and was about to take Chen Yuanming out when he suddenly remembered something. What, "By the way, after talking for a long time, what shall we call the next generation of CDs?"

Being asked such a question, Chen Yuanming was stunned for a moment, then suddenly grinned, "Let's call it digital1Versati1edisc, Digital Versatile Disc, or dVd for short."

Seeing that the situation in the United States is very good, Chen Yuanming and Yan Qiaosen enthusiastically devoted themselves to a new round of overtime. Who knows that the dVd standard has not yet been formally established, and a message came back from China. The basin of cold water dampened the enthusiasm of the two.

Meng Lisheng's voice on the phone was surprisingly serious, "You and Lao Yan come back quickly, we are going to file a lawsuit!"