Chapter 148 Combination Punch
After Garfield learned about the specific situation of inventory and funds, he asked Zhang Jierui:
"Jerry, we can't just passively take the beating. We need to take the initiative. Do you have any ideas?"
"Of course. In fact, over the past six months, I have been communicating and preparing with the Security Department, and we are planning to give ABCD a big gift in the near future." Zhang Jie clenched his fists, his face full of viciousness.
"Oh? Are we going to ask them to take a homemade plane again?" Xu Yingming joked.
Zhang Jierui shook his head: "It's okay to take a dirt plane once, but it will be easy to be exposed if we do it again. This time we will try something new."
"Then I'll wait and see ." Garfield was very much looking forward to the company's approach.
Zhang Jierui's eyes seemed to be ready to devour someone: "It's almost done. The early layout has been completed. This time, I want ABCD to spit out the profits of decades, including the principal and interest."
…
Britain.
London is home to a world-renowned financial industry.
Among them are naturally the bulk commodities in international futures, such as wheat, sugar, sunflower oil, palm oil, rice, soybeans, soybean meal and other bulk agricultural products, which are also popular in the futures market.
ABCD has set up a special office here, which is responsible for futures trading of agricultural products and risk hedging.
Due to the smooth soybean planting in North America in May and June this year, the relatively good weather, and the fact that Chinese buyers turned to South America and Russia, major institutions believe that soybean and soybean meal prices will be low in the second half of this year.
David, head of Louis Dreyfus' futures trading department, was watching the market at this time.
Suddenly he discovered that there were a lot of long orders on today's trading page, totaling tens of millions of US dollars.
In fact, in the past six months, there have been quite a few long orders for North American soybean and soybean meal futures for delivery in August and September this year.
David secretly estimated that the accumulated long position funds were more than 3 billion US dollars.
He secretly mocked the other party for being a fool. There was a clear expectation of a bumper soybean harvest in North America, while international soybean and soybean meal prices were not high and even had room for further decline. Going long now would definitely result in a loss.
After discussing with several colleagues, David contacted the heads of the futures trading departments of Bunge, Cargill and ADM.
The four companies' futures analysis conclusions are quite consistent, that is, the prices of soybeans and soybean meal will continue to fall in the second half of the year. Now they can join forces to short soybeans and soybean meal to hedge their company's losses in actual soybean transactions.
Therefore, David and others began to lead ABCD's futures traders to systematically place short orders for soybeans and soybean meal to the market.
However, the short orders they issued were quickly taken up by others.
David and the others didn't pay much attention to this, but secretly lamented that there were so many stupid and rich idiots this year.
This kind of long-short game seems to have a trading volume of only tens of millions of dollars each time, but the total accumulated trading amount is not small.
Because ABCD is the dominant force in the agricultural sector and has an American background, investment banks around the world have given them high leverage rights.
Once the international soybean and soybean meal prices reverse, ABCD will most likely not be able to bear it and will go bankrupt directly.
It’s just that David and others are too optimistic and think that there is no chance for soybean prices to rise in the second half of the year. After all, their employer is the world’s largest soybean producer, and whether soybean prices will rise or not is still up to ABCD.
Therefore, when they see long orders, they take them without hesitation, and they continue to place short orders, which causes their leverage ratio to continue to increase and risks to accumulate secretly.
David and others dreamed of making a fortune.
But the crisis is coming to them.
…
North America.
The Great Lakes Plain and the Mississippi River Plain are both famous large-scale mechanized agricultural areas in North America. A total of 700 million acres of soybeans are planted in the entire America.
This is the world's largest soybean-growing area and the region with the largest soybean production.
94% of North American soybeans are genetically modified soybeans, especially Monsanto's genetically modified soybean varieties, which are the best among them.
Decatur, Illinois.
The ADM headquarters building, which was bombed beyond recognition, has been cleared after more than half a year of demolition.
Fortunately, ADM still has many office buildings in the local area that can be used as temporary headquarters.
Hook, who still runs a pet shop here, ended a road trip of more than half a month and returned to the pet shop he had been away from for a long time, taking his beloved pet mouse.
"Welcome home, Mr. Hook!" the clerk Jessica greeted with a smile.
Hook waved his hand: “Jessica, is there any problem with the pet store recently?”
"No."
Hook opened the back door of the pickup truck and unloaded several boxes of bees.
"Is this a bee?" Jessica asked curiously.
"Well, I bought them in the South. We need to quickly build a greenhouse for them , otherwise they won't survive the winter." Hooker said as he carried the beehives.
Jessica was not surprised by her boss's strange hobby, or rather, Hook's behavior in America was considered normal compared to some eccentric weirdos and freaks.
Just when the two were chatting.
Soybean farms on the Great Lakes plains are also facing a fatal crisis.
At ADM's No. 15 soybean farm on the shores of Lake Michigan, the farm manager, Mr. Hall, is preparing to apply the last application of fertilizer to the soybeans.
But as soon as he was driving his spraying truck through the soybean field, he noticed something was wrong.
"Huh? Why are there so many yellow leaves?" He couldn't stop to check, so he picked up the walkie-talkie and said, "Bob... go to the field and check the soybeans. I think I see a lot of yellow leaves."
“Sizzle…OK.”
Bob, who was responsible for spraying pesticides on the farm, appeared in the middle of the farmland driving an all-terrain vehicle.
He took a closer look and found that many soybean leaves were covered with yellow spots and showed signs of disease.
"Downy mildew? What's going on? This variety is very disease-resistant." Bob took off his cowboy hat and scratched his sweaty head.
He felt that the disease was already very serious, and the farm did not have any pesticides specifically to kill this fungus, so he had to report it to the headquarters immediately.
By the time ADM, Cargill and Bunge reacted, downy mildew caused by soybean blight had already broken out across North America.
The confirmed infected area alone has reached about 80 million acres.
Based on previous experience with fungal infections, as long as one farm is affected, the surrounding farms in the same water system will most likely not be spared.
Apparently, there are large areas of soybean downy mildew in the Great Lakes and Mississippi River, which means that soybean farms in these two regions are basically at risk of infection.
It is now basically impossible to spray pesticides to kill fungi. Usually, they achieve the purpose of prevention through seed disinfection and soil disinfection.
Sure enough, over the next week, downy mildew continued to spread, and any farm that grew genetically modified soybeans was basically unable to escape the disaster.
This situation shocked the scientific researchers at ADM, Cargill and Bunge.
After testing and experimental tests, they soon discovered the problem: the soybean blight fungus seemed to have "evolved" the ability to specifically target genetically modified soybeans.
One exogenous gene in several genetically modified soybean varieties was the focus of attention by soybean blight bacteria.
North American soybeans were hit hard by this sudden outbreak of downy mildew.
