Chapter 296 Bear's troubles

  Although it is inconvenient for Zhong Shi to short Hong Kong dollars for some reasons, he also boasted in front of Ma Jiarui. Naturally, he is not willing to break his promise, so the funds of the entire Tianyu Fund are invested in other markets.

  However, Zhong Shi soon realized that the impact of international hot money on the Hong Kong capital market is basically unavoidable, and it cannot be stopped by a Tianyu Fund. As for Zhong Shi, what he can do is extremely limited. Even if he ran to Ren Yigang at this time and explained a series of hedge fund strategies in detail from beginning to end, he might not be able to impress this stubborn man. President of the Monetary Authority.

   Besides, in mainland China, although the Zhugeguan praised him a lot, he would never consider handing over the funds for aiding Hong Kong to him, because he is not a member of the system. Even if Zhugeguan can withstand the pressure from all sides and hand over the funds to Zhong Shi, Zhong Shi will refuse without hesitation. He does not want to stand on the opposite side of the entire Chinese-funded enterprises in Hong Kong.

  Since it cannot be rescued, it is definitely not Zhongshi’s style to watch so much market value evaporate out of thin air without doing anything. Therefore, Zhong Shi had an idea and thought of a compromise method, that is, to use the name of Skyline Financial Company to invest in the Hong Kong stock futures index market.

  Although there is an options market, the underlying value and transaction volume of the entire options market cannot be compared with the futures market, so Zhong Shi flatly rejected it without even thinking about it.

  Hang Seng Index Futures, launched in May 1986, has become an important hedging tool for the Hong Kong stock market. Later, the trading volume of the Hang Seng Index became larger and larger, and gradually hedging transactions no longer became the mainstream, and the speculative trading volume accounted for half of the entire trading volume.

  Futures contracts are divided into four months, namely the current month, the next month and two quarterly months. That is to say, it is October at this time, so the contracts appearing on the market are October, November, December, 1997 and March, 1998 respectively. Naturally, the current month contract has the largest volume, followed by the next month, while the two furthest quarter months have the least volume.

   What I have to say is that the margin system of the Hong Kong Hang Seng Index futures market is slightly different. Its initial margin for each contract is a fixed number, which is called margin in vernacular, and the corresponding adjustment of the margin is done through the exchange. Some exchanges calculate the margin amount for the next day based on the settlement price of the day.

This kind of deposit system suffered a great loss in the stock market crash in 1987. At that time, due to the stock market crash, the bullish futures contract with a deposit of 15,000 yuan per lot could only support a drop of 300 points at most. The contract is wiped out, and even the holder has to owe a huge debt. If you want to settle at this time, there will be big problems. Tens of thousands of contracts may be defaulted, and the reputation of Hong Kong Futures Exchange will be ruined immediately.

At that time, the Hong Kong British government did not hesitate to close the exchange for four days because of the issue of the settlement of the Hang Seng Index. Later, with the mediation of all parties, it finally set up a fundraising project funded 50% by the Hong Kong government and 50% by major banks and brokers. A 2 billion Hong Kong dollar standby loan to the Hong Kong Futures Guarantee Company was later increased to 4 billion Hong Kong dollars, and the outstanding contracts with a total value of 1.8 billion Hong Kong dollars at that time were reluctantly disposed of.

   Later, the futures exchange carried out a series of improvement measures to ensure that large-scale defaults would not occur. Today, the number of futures and options transactions on the Hong Kong Futures Exchange has jumped to the sixth in the world, and it is a very large trading market.

It took Zhong Shi a full month to establish the position he expected. Although he didn't care about the average price of the position, the brokerage firm faithfully fulfilled their duties, and the average price of Zhong Shi's short position was Raised to around 14200 points.

After the change of month, these 8,500 contracts immediately suffered a loss, because the Hong Kong stock market began to rise after experiencing the downturn last month, but the loss was not serious, and Zhongshi still had an additional provision of 300 million Hong Kong dollars The gold is in the account of the brokerage house, so the economic bank has not reduced its position.

   Over the past few days, the Hang Seng Index has plummeted, and Zhong Shi's position has also turned from loss to profit. As of October 17, each contract in his hand has a profit of 600 points, or 30,000 Hong Kong dollars. If multiplied by the amount, the profit of the entire account will reach 350 million Hong Kong dollars, and the rate of return will reach 100%. In this case , obviously you can accept it as soon as you see it.

  The brokerage firm has been calling in the past few days, advising Zhongshi to make a settlement, or move some funds to November for hedging. Zhong Shi was so annoyed that he decisively issued an ultimatum to the brokerage firm after several harassments. If there was another similar situation, he would change to another brokerage firm.

   As a result, the brokerage firm stopped immediately, and Zhong Shi also fell into silence, but he still paid close attention to the Hang Seng market and knocked a few words on the brokerage firm from time to time.

  Hong Kong Futures Exchange stipulates that if you hold more than 500 open contracts (including futures and options, and contracts of each month), you must report the holder to the futures exchange. Zhong Shi reported to Skyline Financial Company, and he was acting as an agent. Anyone with a discerning eye can tell that this kind of offshore financial company is a pure speculator. Naturally, the futures exchange will not disclose the specific company name, nor will the brokerage house, but they will list the number of these positions as a single line of speculation. , published regularly to remind the market of risks.

  After Zhong Shi hung up the phone, another person thought about it quietly for a long time, and left the office after feeling that there was nothing missing.

  …

  At the Tiger Fund headquarters in Manhattan, USA, a discussion about the Hong Kong market was in full swing, and the topic of the discussion was naturally how to short the Hong Kong market.

  Tiger Fund took the lead in shorting the Hong Kong stock market this time, because Soros of Quantum Fund had something to say first, so even if Quantum Fund is coveting the Hong Kong market, it is not good to go against the public speech of its boss at this time. Although it is said that the capital market does not pay attention to these things at all, Soros is not just talking about it. He really believes that there is no chance for the Asian currency market during this period of time, and it even tends to be stable. It's just that the development of things gradually deviated from his expectations, and finally after January 1998, he couldn't help but also began to intervene in Hong Kong's capital market.

"Our problem now is that we don't have enough bargaining chips, although this time is very beneficial to us." Robert Citron said with some frustration, "The index of the Hong Kong market almost covers more than 90% of the stocks, but the heavyweights are against the index. The influence is very large. Among them, the market capitalization of financial and industrial and commercial stocks ranks firmly in the top two, and the other is real estate and public utilities.”

"Because although the Hong Kong stock market fell slightly a while ago, the overall volatility was not too large, and it was basically maintained at around 14,000 to 15,000. It is impossible to buy these stocks that are obviously going to fall, so I am afraid that the strength in suppressing the index will not be enough in the future.”

If you want to suppress the index, you must sell the heavyweight stocks. Because the Hong Kong market is booming in the early stage, the prices of these stocks are naturally high. Naturally, hedge funds will not buy these stocks. They will only borrow stocks through brokers. Selling in the market, but the problem is that these brokers do not have many stocks, which naturally brings great difficulty to their short selling.

  Until now, people like Robert Citron still think that the devaluation of the New Taiwan dollar and Black Monday are coincidences. In fact, only Julian Robertson knows the truth of the matter.

   "That's a really big problem!"

  Julian Robertson remained calm, and casually agreed. He was also very annoyed. Regarding the plan to attack Hong Kong this time, most of the hedge funds prepared their funds to impact the exchange rate of the Hong Kong dollar. Only a few top hedge funds knew what was going on.

   In other words, even within the hot money, it is believed that the main direction of attack is the Hong Kong dollar.

  Tiger Fund and several other funds used the channels of Goodman, Stanley and other companies to collect information and spread the word. In addition, they borrowed stocks from most brokerages that can provide securities lending functions. Naturally, most of them are heavyweight stocks. But the time given to them is too short. Even if they go all out, they have not borrowed too many stocks. So far, they have only borrowed stocks worth about 8 billion Hong Kong dollars.

If there are not enough heavyweight stocks to sell, the herd effect will not be driven, the stock market will not plummet, the futures index short position will not make money, and the position loss of selling Hong Kong dollars will be impossible to recover at that time. This is a series of chain reactions. .

  But Julian Robertson is not really in a hurry, because he already has a back move, which is not suitable for use yet, and he still needs to wait for an opportunity.

   "Are there any other unfavorable factors besides the insufficient short-selling quota of heavyweight stocks?" Julian Robertson had already made up his mind, and asked indifferently after Robert Sitron and others had finished speaking.

Billy King stood up and said: "In addition, I also noticed that in the recent Hong Kong stock market, it seems that a group of funds appeared against us. We sold heavy stocks, and they bought them. The problem is not here , but this situation occurs in many heavyweight stocks, it is very likely that it is the behavior of supporting the market, and I analyze this fund should be the bullish side taking the opportunity to absorb chips."

"yes?"

  Julian Robertson narrowed his eyes, replied seemingly casually, and then asked, "How much is the transaction amount?"

"About 50 million US dollars, not a small amount. However, after this period of decline, a small number of investors began to sell their heavyweight stocks, which relieved the pressure on us to sell a lot. I believe that most of their funds have been invested Come to this aspect." Billy King said with a little excitement as the gleam in his eyes flashed.

  From the present point of view, the herd effect has already shown part of its power, and the rest is the reaction of the market.

   Thanks to the book friend Mr. Snail and Shihuangtian for voting for the monthly ticket!

  

  

  (end of this chapter)