FYN Chapter 25 The Shock of the Morgan Group!
Chapter 25 The Shock of the Morgan Group!
Gu Yuhan couldn't help but feel a sense of感慨 (gan3kai3, a complex emotion encompassing both emotion and feeling). In the end, the United States still has a formidable rival. As long as the big brother exists, the United States must remain vigilant and walk on thin ice. As long as the big brother exists, the United States must go all out to compete fiercely with the big brother in scientific and technological research and development and people's welfare. As long as the big brother exists, the United States will have to allocate a large amount of social welfare resources to ordinary people.
An ordinary lumberjack lives in a spacious detached villa and can easily support his entire family on his own. Such a life would be unimaginable decades from now.
To be fair, the collapse of the Soviet Union was the most beneficial outcome for the West.
However, it is undeniable that the period when Big Brother existed coincided with a golden age of explosive growth in global technology.
Before they could say anything more, the two stepped off the plane. Gu Yuhan immediately spotted the white man standing not far away, the one who had come to pick them up.
"Mr. Gu!" Upon seeing Gu Yuhan and his group, the man immediately put on a polite smile.
"Hello, Mr. Alden!" Gu Yuhan stepped forward and shook hands with Alden, then said with a smile, "I'll be relying on you to handle many matters during my stay in the United States!"
"You're too kind!" Alden replied with a smile. "Mr. Gu, please follow me!"
Afterwards, Gu Yuhan got into the waiting car and followed Alden to the hotel that had been booked in advance. Sitting next to her, Su Rongrong couldn't help but ask curiously, "Just who is this Alden?"
Gu Yuhan stretched his slightly stiff body and replied with a smile, "He's from the Morgan Group!"
"The Morgan Group?" Su Rongrong's eyes widened in surprise. "How did you get involved with them?"
"The futures business I'm going to do this time is quite large," Gu Yuhan said with a smile. "I've converted all 100 million Hong Kong dollars into US dollars, and now I have a total of 14 million US dollars. Of course, I'll find the most reputable institution to cooperate with."
Although the Morgan Group takes a 5% cut of the profits as commission, in terms of reputation alone, they are absolutely trustworthy partners.
Gu Yuhan was also secretly planning that once this deal was completed and he had enough capital, he would definitely push Hong Kong to launch its own futures market as soon as possible.
By then, I won't need to go through all that trouble to come to the United States to do business.
Of course, besides going long on oil futures in the United States, Gu Yuhan had another plan: to see if he could get some advanced technology from the United States.
In particular, Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center.
Xerox is a giant corporation that virtually monopolizes the global copier market. The continuous stream of enormous profits has made them complacent and unambitious. Although there is still slow technological progress, many advanced technologies in their research centers are left untouched and neglected. These include the mouse, object-oriented programming, Ethernet as a precursor to the Internet, and revolutionary graphical user interfaces!
These technologies later became the core foundation of Apple's operating system, but Xerox acted as if it were rich and indifferent, employing a large number of top technical personnel and producing countless epoch-making achievements, but it didn't know how to utilize them at all.
Later, Steve Jobs came here and made a deal with Xerox executives: Xerox allowed him to visit all the research results in the research center, and Jobs gave Xerox the opportunity to buy 10 shares of Apple stock at a very low price.
Xerox executives were ecstatic. In their view, buying shares of the IT upstart Apple at a low price was a sure-fire way to make money.
As a result, Jobs only went to Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center once, and took away a large amount of valuable wealth, including technology and personnel.
This successful acquisition was later considered a major technological theft by Apple from Xerox, and some even called it the most successful "robbery" in industrial history.
But it was with these stolen technologies and recruited talents that Jobs assembled a top-notch R&D team and successfully launched the world's first personal computer, Lisa, equipped with a user graphical interface, a mouse and keyboard, and multitasking capabilities.
Later, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates engaged in a protracted war of words over the release of Windows 1.0.
In his office at Apple headquarters, Steve Jobs, in front of more than a dozen people, angrily confronted Bill Gates: "You're stealing our stuff!"
Bill Gates calmly uttered one of the most classic lines of his life: "We all had a wealthy neighbor named Xerox. One day I broke into his house to steal his computer, only to find that you had already stolen everything before me."
Ultimately, both families were thieves.
Gu Yuhan, however, felt that if he had enough capital, he could simply buy these patents and copyrights, so that even if Apple and Microsoft wanted to "steal" them in the future, he could use these technologies openly and legitimately.
Xerox has no reason to refuse an investment if the price is attractive enough.
Of course, if given the opportunity, Gu Yuhan would prefer to invest in Apple. Apple isn't publicly listed yet, so even a small investment, just five percent of the shares, would be worth over two hundred billion dollars in forty years.
The United States is indeed a powerful country in science and technology today, and a considerable portion of its cutting-edge technologies, originally used in the military field, are gradually being transferred to the civilian sector.
As long as you're not too unlucky, you're sure to find some real treasures here.
Before coming to the United States, Gu Yuhan had already made a detailed list, which was full of companies, technologies and patents that he wanted to acquire. He also planned to establish his own company in the United States.
However, it is too early to consider these things now.
The immediate priority is to wait for the oil crisis to fully erupt.
"100x leverage?"
Alden's face showed disbelief: "Gu, are you really sure you want to use 100x leverage?"
Gu Yuhan brought in an initial investment of fourteen million US dollars.
A leverage of 100 times means he can leverage $1.4 billion in funds.
With such a large sum of money invested in the market, Gu Yuhan would lose everything if global oil prices dropped by just one percent.
Alden had seen many gambler-like investors in the financial world, but he had never seen anyone as crazy as Gu Yuhan before.
Gu Yuhan, however, crossed his legs and said confidently, "That's right, 100x leverage. Mr. Alden, I believe oil prices will continue to rise!"
"All right."
Faced with Gu Yuhan's resolute attitude, Alden could not say anything more.
Gu Yuhan gave Alden a deep look, then looked down at her watch.
The second oil crisis.
This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make money.
The 1978 Iranian Revolution overthrew the Pahlavi dynasty, plunging the country into severe social and economic turmoil.
From the end of 1978 to the beginning of March 1979, Iran completely halted oil exports for 60 days, resulting in a daily supply gap of 5 million barrels in the international oil market, accounting for about one-tenth of the world's total oil consumption at the time. This directly triggered drastic fluctuations in oil prices and a global oil supply shortage.
The sudden sharp drop in international crude oil supply triggered a global buying frenzy, causing oil prices to soar.
What Gu Yuhan needs to do now is to invest all his capital as soon as possible and go long on oil futures.
This is his era's opportunity, and Gu Yuhan cannot afford to miss it no matter what.
The second oil crisis can be divided into two key phases.
The first turning point was the Iranian Revolution, which overthrew the Pahlavi dynasty. This crisis was expected to last until around March 1979.
第二个节点则是1980年9月爆发的两伊战争，这场战争会一直持续到1988年，而石油价格会从每桶13美元一路飙升到41美元的历史高位。
The biggest beneficiary of the second oil crisis was actually the Soviet Union, the big brother. The huge oil export revenue allowed the Soviet Union to live a good life as a resource dealer, and also made them completely abandon the upgrading and transformation of the manufacturing industry. This directly led to the Soviet Union's rapid decline in competition with the United States.
As a result, more than a decade later, when the United States intervened again, the once invincible Soviet Union was powerless to resist and eventually collapsed.
Gu Yuhan's plan was to accurately grasp these two key moments.
If handled properly, the HK$100 million he had could be turned into a huge fortune of at least US$3 billion.
As for the goal of 10 billion US dollars, there's no need to rush; we can take it slowly.
If he had waited until the second milestone arrived and then done it again, he could have easily amassed a fortune of tens of billions of dollars by the 1980s.
Oil prices will definitely continue to rise.
A one-tenth reduction in global oil production does not mean that prices will only rise by one-tenth; rather, they will continue to rise until those one-tenth can no longer afford oil.
With three billion US dollars in hand, he will basically never have to worry about money again for the rest of his life.
Standing at such a historical crossroads, Gu Yuhan felt that if he couldn't seize the opportunity to make a fortune, he would be wasting his second chance at life.
The outbreak of the second oil crisis was both unexpected and inevitable.
Who would have thought that the Pahlavi dynasty, which was supported by the United States, would be overthrown by a group of religious figures?
However, the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War was a historical inevitability.
"Are you nervous?" Gu Yuhan glanced at Su Rongrong beside him and asked with a smile, "Do you think I'm gambling with my life?"
Su Rongrong was slightly taken aback, then cautiously said, "Boss, haven't we gone too far with this bet? A hundredfold leverage! If the price of oil drops by just one percent, we'll lose everything—that's a whole hundred million Hong Kong dollars!"
"don’t worry."
Gu Yuhan smiled and said unhurriedly, "One hundred million Hong Kong dollars is nothing to me. Even if I lose it, I can earn it back quickly. Don't worry, we're sure to make a fortune this time. By the way, how's your understanding of those people I asked you to investigate?"
Gu Yuhan asked Su Rongrong to investigate some Chinese students and scholars studying in the United States.
His principle is simple: as long as they are science and engineering talents, regardless of whether they are useful now, he will recruit them all to Hong Kong first.
"The investigation is almost complete, but we haven't started contacting them yet," Su Rongrong quickly replied.
"Let's wait until we finish this round of oil futures trading." Gu Yuhan stretched slightly and said with a smile, "Don't worry, it's just 100x leverage, it's no big deal."
Su Rongrong: "..."
Well, she really couldn't understand where Gu Yuhan got such confidence from.
They even said something like "just a mere 100x leverage".
As he spoke, Gu Yuhan lowered his head again to continue reading.
He suddenly realized that his English level was still insufficient, and there were too many professional terms in the book that he needed to learn and master.
Since he's going to pursue a path of technological development, he needs to understand these things himself.
Fortunately, his intelligence was greatly enhanced after his rebirth, otherwise he really wouldn't have been able to handle such complex professional knowledge.
Su Rongrong simply couldn't understand where Gu Yuhan's composure came from.
However, the world continues to move slowly forward along its established historical trajectory.
On December 2, more than two million Iranians gathered in Tehran's Freedom Square, demanding the removal of the Shah and the return of Khomeini, marking the official start of the Iranian Revolution.
Once a revolution breaks out, it immediately unleashes a tremendous wave.
In fact, undercurrents had been brewing within Iran for some time, and the Pahlavi dynasty simply did not have the ability to suppress these dissenting voices.
However, the Pahlavi dynasty trusted the United States too much, naively believing that as long as they had the United States as their backer, they could rest easy.
Little did they know that the United States was at a critical juncture of strategic contraction.
Faced with the internal crisis of the Pahlavi dynasty, the United States chose to stand idly by and did not take any intervention measures.
After all, the current US president is Jimmy Carter, who is known as "Emperor Renzong of America".
The United States' policy of non-intervention directly led to the rapid collapse of the Pahlavi dynasty.
For a full sixty days, the United States watched helplessly as the regime it had helped to build was overthrown.
It can only be said that Carter truly deserves the title of "the Emperor Renzong of the United States".
……
……
"What?"
The moment Alden received the news, he jumped up from his chair.
Has a revolution broken out?
He rushed to his desk, grabbed the phone, and began frantically verifying the authenticity of the message.
"Okay, okay, I understand!"
Alden took a deep breath, and the image of Gu Yuhan suddenly appeared in his mind. He was filled with intense curiosity: How did this Chinese man foresee the surge in oil prices?
Alden then immediately reported the matter to the top management of the Morgan financial group.
The Morgan Group's top executives immediately took the matter very seriously and ordered Alden to continue contacting Gu Yuhan.
They wanted to hear Gu Yuhan's assessment and analysis of the current situation.
He was even more curious to know, in his opinion, how high oil prices would eventually rise.
At such a critical moment, it's always good to obtain as much valuable information as possible, and the more the better.
Not long after, Alden met Gu Yuhan again in a private office on Wall Street.
"Hello, Mr. Alden."
Gu Yuhan looked at Alden with a smile. Several tall bodyguards had appeared beside him. These were mercenaries hired by Blackwater Company, specifically responsible for protecting his personal safety.
Before long, he will have nearly three billion dollars in wealth.