My Age of Investment

When Xia Jingxing rushed to the company, Liu Hai, Jiang Ping, Abel and other senior executives from the New York office were already there.

A group of people were drinking coffee and chatting in low voices, with smiles on everyone's faces.

When Xia Jing walked into the room and saw this scene, he raised his hand and glanced at the hands on his watch, then smiled and spread his hands to everyone, "I'm not late! I'm still ten minutes early. Did I remember the meeting time wrong?"

Liu Hai laughed loudly and said: "You are not late, and you did not remember the time wrong. The main reason is that everyone is too excited today and came too early."

At this time, other executives also stopped talking and looked at Xia Jingxing with smiles.

Today is the stage summary meeting of Vision Capital, and it is also the day to count the spoils.

At such an important moment, everyone's heart is full of fire.

The outside world may not know the specific operating conditions of Envision Capital, and they may make assumptions about it.

But as company executives, they know very well how fruitful the company's results will be this year.

Looking at the entire Wall Street and even the global financial community, they are rare.

The company has such a brilliant record. As a member of the company, they are proud to be part of the company and are full of expectations for the future and money.

Xia Jingxing sat down at the head of the table, looked at everyone's faces, and said with a smile: "Everyone seems to be a little impatient, so let's get straight to the topic. Each department and each fund team will report their performance respectively."

Hearing this, the other executives all looked at Liu Hai.

This month is the highlight moment of the stock trading team, so Liu Hai should be the first to report.

Liu Hai stood up and walked to the end of the table and started playing the PPT.

At the same time, Liu Xiaoduo placed a paper document in front of Xia Jingxing. The title "Investment Income Statement" was very conspicuous.

"Currently, all US$14 billion in short positions held by the New York office's stock trading team have been closed, and US$1 billion in put options of US$6 billion held have been sold or exercised."

After saying that, Liu Hai pressed the PPT controller, and two pie charts appeared behind him.

One is the share holding ratio of each stock, and the other is the option holding ratio of each stock.

The two round cake-like statistical charts were subdivided into dozens of pieces, and each piece was marked with the name of the stock in detail.

Five major investment banks including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, bankrupt Lehman Brothers, sold-out Bear Stearns, and Merrill Lynch, as well as five major investment banks including Citigroup, Bank of America, JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, and Wachovia, all appear in the picture.

Moreover, the position ratio is not low, and the sector area is larger than other companies.

In addition, those with slightly larger sector areas include AIG, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, HSBC (some assets listed in the United States), etc.

Xia Jingxing interrupted with a smile: "Wait a moment, let me point out an error."

Liu Hai immediately stopped talking, and everyone else also turned their attention to Xia Jingxing.

"Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley can no longer be labeled as investment banks. It is more appropriate to change them to commercial banks or bank holding companies."

As soon as Xia Jingxing finished speaking, everyone burst into laughter.

Just a few days ago, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley announced their transformation from single investment banks to bank holding companies.

This transformation means that the two major financial giants will not only be able to operate investment banking brokerage businesses, but also set up commercial bank branches to accept deposits, and most importantly... enjoy the same permanent rights to obtain emergency loans from the Federal Reserve as other commercial banks.

This is a joint effort by the two major investment banks to save themselves and the Federal Reserve to "justifiably" rescue the two major investment banks.

Liu Hai laughed twice and said, "I almost forgot about it. It became a habit all of a sudden."

Xia Jingxing smiled lightly and said: "After this month, there will no longer be a pure investment banking giant on Wall Street, and an era has come to an end!

The five former investment banking giants, including Lehman's bankruptcy, JP Morgan's acquisition of Bear Stearns, Bank of America's acquisition of Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, took the initiative to choose to transform.

In the 1930s, the Federal Reserve and the SEC felt that there were huge risks in banks doing both commercial banking and investment banking business, such as using depositors' deposits to invest in high-risk stocks and causing huge losses, so they took measures against the banking industry. Measures for separate supervision.

The financial empire of the Morgan consortium was therefore divided into two, with Morgan Stanley responsible for the investment banking business and JP Morgan responsible for the commercial banking business.

Now we have started to operate mixed businesses again. I don’t know if this is a reversal of history. "

Liu Hai smiled and replied: "This is also a measure that has to be taken to deal with the financial crisis. However, today's technology and regulatory systems are very mature. Even if commercial banks and investment banks do business together, no institution dares to play any tricks. ”

Xia Jingxing nodded lightly. If some details are ignored, the changes in Wall Street investment banks will be more of a paper article without much practical significance.

After the financial crisis, everyone continued to play music and dance.

After some emotion, Liu Hai reported and played PPT pictures.

"Bear Stearns shorted 4.28 million shares at a high of $74 and bought 5 million put options for a premium of $3.5 million...

At present, this investment has all been profit-taking, with a total investment of US$322.1 million and a total profit of US$397.65 million. "

"Lehman Brothers, we short-sold all the way from the price of $60 until the company declared bankruptcy. The specific operations can be roughly divided into three stages..."

Liu Hai began to introduce in detail the specific process of his team's short selling of Lehman Brothers.

First, we took advantage of the downward trend at the beginning of the year and went short;

Then we cooperated with Greenlight Capital and did another round of short selling;

The most profitable thing was the last wave of short selling at the moment of bankruptcy.

“In terms of shorting the underlying stocks, I invested US$1.2 billion to short Lehman three times, making a total profit of US$1.4 billion.”

It is impossible for short selling profit to exceed 100%?

However, Xia Jingxing did not doubt the authenticity of this data, because the return that would not exceed 100% refers to a single action of shorting the underlying stock.

If you go short several times and accumulate profits, the rate of return may still exceed 100%.

Soon, Liu Hai revealed the answer.

He pointed at the groups of data flashed across the screen and began to introduce: "In the first wave of actions, during the two trading days when Bear Stearns announced a crisis, Lehman's stock price fell from over 60 US dollars to 30 US dollars. We chose He exited the position at a profit and made a profit of US$600 million.

Then, Lehman released its first-quarter financial report, and its stock price soared 46%.

We again shorted 20 million shares at the high of $45.

Lehman was first questioned by Greenlight Capital, and then released a loss-making second quarter financial report. The stock price fell to US$15. We closed the position and exited at a profit, earning US$600 million in profits.

The last time we went short, we shorted at $10 and made a profit of $200 million. "