My Age of Investment

   Chapter 1153 Counting the spoils

   When Xia Jingxing arrived at the company, Liu Hai, Jiang Ping, Abel and other executives from the New York office were all there.

   A group of people drank coffee and talked in low voices, and everyone had a smile on their face.

  Xia Jingxing entered the room to see this scene, raised his hand to glance at the pointer on the watch, and then spread his hand towards the crowd with a smile, "I'm not late! I'm still ten minutes early. Could it be that I misremembered the meeting time?"

  Liu Hai laughed 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 it is too early."

   At this moment, the 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.

   Such an important moment, everyone is full of fire.

  The outside world may not be aware of the specific operation of Vision Capital, and they are chasing the wind.

   But as executives of the company, they are very aware of how fruitful the company’s results are this year.

  Looking at the entire Wall Street, and even the global financial community, it is also a rare existence.

  The company's record is so brilliant, they are proud of being a part of the company, and they are full of expectations for the future and money.

  Xia Jingxing sat down in the first place, glanced over the faces of everyone, and smiled: "Seeing that everyone seems to be impatient, let's go directly to the theme, each department and each fund team report their performance separately."

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

   This month is a highlight moment for the stock trading team, so it should be Liu Hai’s first report.

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

   At the same time, Liu Xiaoduo put a paper document in front of Xia Jingxing, with the headlines "Investment Income Statement" very prominent.

   "Currently, the $14 billion short position held by the stock trading team in the New York office has been fully closed, and the $6 billion put option held has been sold or exercised for $1 billion."

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

   One is the percentage of underlying stock holdings of each stock, and the other is the percentage of option holdings of each stock.

  The two pie-like statistical charts are subdivided into dozens of pieces, and each piece is marked with the stock name in detail.

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

   And the proportion of holdings is not low, and the fan-shaped area is larger than other companies.

   In addition, there are AIG, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, HSBC (some assets listed in the United States) and so on with a slightly larger sector area.

  Xia Jingxing interrupted with a smile: "Wait a minute, I'll point out a mistake."

   Liu Hai immediately stopped speaking, and others also turned their attention to Xia Jingxing.

   "Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley can no longer be marked 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 laughed in unison.

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

  This transformation means that the two financial giants can not only operate investment bank brokerage business in the future, but also set up commercial bank branches to absorb deposits, and most importantly... Like other commercial banks, they can permanently enjoy the right to obtain emergency loans from the Federal Reserve.

   This is a joint effort by the two major investment banks to rescue themselves.

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

  Xia Jingxing said with a light smile: "After this month, there will be no more pure investment banking giants on Wall Street, and an era has come to an end!

  The former five major investment banking giants, Lehman 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 for banks to do both commercial banks and investment banking business, such as using depositors' deposits to invest in high-risk stocks, resulting in huge losses. Measures for the division of industry supervision.

The financial empire of the    Morgan consortium was thus divided into two, with Morgan Stanley in charge of the investment banking business and JP Morgan in charge of the commercial banking business.

   Now they have started mixed business operations again. I don’t know if this is a reversal of history. "

Liu Hai smiled and replied: "This is also a necessary measure to deal with the financial crisis, but now the technology and regulatory system are very mature, even if the business of commercial banks and investment banks are done together, no institution dares to play any tricks. already."

  Xia Jingxing nodded lightly, if some details were ignored, this change in Wall Street investment banking is mostly a paper article, without much practical significance.

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

   After sighing, Liu Hai then reported and played PPT pictures.

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

   At present, this investment has been fully settled, with a total investment of 322.1 million US dollars and a total profit of 397.65 million US dollars. "

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

   Liu Hai began to detail the specific process of their team shorting Lehman Brothers.

   first took advantage of the downtrend at the beginning of the year to short a wave;

   Then cooperated with Greenlight Capital and went short again;

The most profitable    is this last wave of short selling at the moment of bankruptcy.

   "In terms of shorting the underlying stock, I shorted Lehman three times before and after investing US$1.2 billion, with a total profit of US$1.52 billion."

   Generally speaking, it is impossible to earn more than 100% profit from short selling?

   However, Xia Jingxing did not doubt the authenticity of this data, because no more than 100% return refers to a single action of shorting the underlying stock.

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

   Soon, the bangs revealed the answer.

He pointed to a set of data on the screen and began to introduce: "In the first wave of action, in the two trading days when Bear Stearns announced the crisis, Lehman's stock price fell from $60 to $30. We chose After closing the position and exiting at a profit, it made a profit of 600 million US dollars.

   Then, Lehman released its first-quarter earnings report, and the stock price rose 46%.

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

Then, Lehman was first questioned by Greenlight Capital about the authenticity of the financial report and hidden a large number of toxic assets, and then they released a serious loss in the second quarter financial report. , reaped $500 million in revenue.

  After this, Lehman has successively reported a series of good news about de-risking, planning debt financing, and equity financing, and the stock price rebounded to a range of 20-25 US dollars.

   We entered again and sold 20 million shares short at an average sell price of $22.

   In the end, we ushered in the news of Lehman bankruptcy. The stock price plummeted to 30 cents. We closed the position with less than 20 million US dollars and made a profit of 420 million US dollars. "

   (end of this chapter)