"Aren't those Chinese purchasing groups ready yet?" Raft asked, supporting his head with a headache.
More than ten days had passed since the arrival of the Chinese purchasing group, and time had already entered April 2004. Raft's organizations had started responsible for stabilizing market prices again.
But until now, that damn Chinese purchasing group had not yet started purchasing.
Initially, the news came that the Chinese purchasing group would arrive in the United States within three days and would procure soybeans through centralized bidding in the futures market, reportedly purchasing 3 million tons of soybeans at once.
However, this news made Raft and others very disappointed, because they currently held nearly 6 million tons of soybeans. If only 3 million tons were purchased, what about the remaining 3 million tons?
After all, once this purchasing group was organized, it would take several months to organize the second one. If high soybean prices were maintained during these months, their various financial institutions would bleed out.
The appetite of the Chinese should not be so small! At this moment, Raft wished the Chinese purchasing group would just disband.
Fortunately, new news soon arrived. It turned out that several major soybean processing enterprises in China had doubts about the purchasing group. To gain greater bargaining power, the purchasing group was negotiating with several major soybean processing enterprises.
Therefore, the trip originally planned for three days was extended to one week. However, if everything went smoothly, the scale of the purchasing group would increase to 5 million tons.
Although there was still some gap from the target of 6 million tons, with some scattered retail purchases, the accumulated soybeans should still be sold out, but definitely not as profitable as imagined.
But 5 million tons would be enough, they could accept it.
So, Raft and other organizations began to maintain the soybean price in the market for a whole week. What was somewhat unbearable was that more and more soybean orders appeared in the market. On the busiest day, nearly 300,000 tons of soybeans appeared at once. It was said that the organization responsible for stabilizing prices at that time directly wanted to give up, as this would directly increase their holding cost to nearly $380 per ton.
So Raft and others held an emergency meeting and decided that each company would share about 20,000 tons to dilute the holding cost, which finally pacified the runaway organization.
There was no other way, the price of soybeans absolutely could not fall! Once it fell, the purchasing group would become suspicious. They would worry that the soybean price would continue to fall, and then the purchasing group might not come.
And once the entire market started to be bearish, their plan of half a year would be completely declared bankrupt. This was unacceptable no matter what, so they had to maintain the soybean price and even maintain an upward trend, continuing to rise by nearly 1% every day, forcing the purchasing group and the Chinese to come and take over quickly.
Fortunately, although the 300,000 tons were huge, the increased cost after everyone shared some was within an acceptable range.
But the problem was that there were still tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of tons of soybeans appearing on the market every day. During the week the purchasing group was negotiating, nearly 1.5 million tons of soybeans had been absorbed by the alliance to maintain the soybean futures price, and the average holding cost for everyone had risen to $370 per ton.
Raft and others felt that there might be some problems, so they sent subordinates to investigate.
The investigation itself was not difficult. Their influence in the United States, if not almighty, could basically allow them to move around freely. They also had many friends in the market, so a little investigation quickly revealed that some bastards were trying to short the soybean market. These extra more than 1 million tons of soybeans were soybeans that those bastards had obtained from other institutions by shorting and then dumped onto the soybean market.
They were betting that Raft and others would not be able to bear the price, and then the soybean market would collapse within three months. Then they would acquire soybeans at a low price to cover their positions and thus make a huge profit.
"These bastards, they are trying to siphon oil from us!" Raft and others were furious.
But they had no other way, because according to their investigation, these operations were carried out by some small funds or institutions in the United States.
Although these people were small, they also had their own backgrounds. If you pushed all the way up, you could reach many top financial groups. Raft did not dare to provoke these giants.
Well, in fact, American financial institutions all have the right to run rampant in the United States, and they can arbitrarily cut the leeks of ordinary people. When two institutions compete, it depends on their respective operations.
Moreover, Raft and others analyzed and found that the goals of both parties had a certain consistency.
The goal of institutions like Raft was to raise the price of soybeans, then trick the Chinese into taking over. After they took over, they would directly abandon market support and return to the real soybean market, causing the price of the entire soybean market to plummet. Thus, the blood of Chinese enterprises would be drained, becoming their profit.
At the same time, their backer enterprises began to acquire those bankrupt Chinese soybean industries, achieving a win-win situation.
As for these shorting institutions, their fundamental goal was to wait for the soybean price to collapse after three months, because only when the soybean price collapsed could they buy back soybeans at a low price. So, the goals of both parties were the same.
It's just that these guys were sucking their own blood, and their profits were drawn from themselves. These extremely detestable guys.
But Raft and others had no choice. They didn't even dare to use financial means to deal with them. Because once financial means were used to deal with them, the soybean price would directly collapse, and they would never expect the Chinese to take over again.
And other means could not be used. So Raft and others could only hold their noses and let these small financial institutions suck their blood, vowing in their hearts that once they had harvested this fat pig of the Chinese, they would turn around and crush all these small financial institutions!
Of course, Raft had sent people to investigate the background of these institutions that were openly shorting them more than once. The results were very certain and reliable: they were some American financial institutions with the background of large financial groups.
Raft did not know that these small financial institutions were all using funds from Western Wild Horse, and Hao Jianguo was making a move after using some American gloves to cover it up.
Of course, with Hao Jianguo's connections and abilities, he originally had no such gloves, but with the help of that old man, things were different. With just one word from this old man, Hao Jianguo's actions could be smooth sailing and perfectly concealed, preventing Raft and other financial institutions from discovering any clues.
After all, they would never have thought that their own people would collude with outsiders to harm themselves. This was unscientific, weren't Americans supposed to harm Americans!
Therefore, Raft could only hope that the seven days would pass quickly, the purchasing group would complete its mission soon, and then all the soybeans in their hands would be taken away, ending this operation.
Originally, everything went very smoothly until the seventh day. The purchasing group officially announced that it had reached agreements with major enterprises, and the procurement target was not 5 million tons, but directly increased to 6.8 million tons.
This made Raft and others overjoyed. After all, after continuously maintaining the market for several days, the soybeans in their hands had increased from 6 million tons to 7.2 million tons, and the pressure was increasing.
As a result, the Chinese procurement target was 1.8 million tons more than expected. When the various institutions heard this news, they were almost in tears.
As for whether this news was true, Raft and others did not doubt it. Because this purchasing group had secret informants from them from the very beginning. More than a dozen soybean processing enterprises in China had actually been controlled by Raft and others in advance.
The executives of these enterprises fully participated in the entire process of initiating, forming, and negotiating the purchasing group. These executives even recorded the negotiation process with small recording devices and handed over the video recordings to Raft.
Raft's employees watched all these hundreds of hours of negotiation recordings and confirmed that these Chinese were genuinely negotiating and intended to purchase. However, everyone's interests were not equal, and they were constantly arguing and negotiating to reconcile interests.
This was normal. After all, the small alliance formed by more than a dozen financial institutions led by Raft spent several hours every day constantly negotiating and coordinating.
But just as the purchasing group was about to be finalized and Raft and others were about to run, a new piece of bad news arrived. That is, the relevant authorities learned about this procurement group and believed that it might impact the domestic soybean market. Therefore, they requested the purchasing group to suspend its activities and only proceed after review and approval by relevant management agencies. Otherwise, not a single soybean would be allowed to enter the port.
Well, once this order was announced, all members of the purchasing group had to agree even if they disagreed. It was said that many members of the purchasing group were cursing the government behind their backs, saying that for every day they delayed, their procurement costs would increase by 1%, which was killing them!
Some members even cried in distress.
Raft and other organizations were truly about to cry. Now, more and more small institutions in the market discovered the business opportunities in soybeans, so they were all trying to short them. Now, nearly 400,000 tons of soybeans appeared on the market every day, and their cost of maintaining the market was increasing dramatically every day. If the Chinese didn't come, they would explode.
Raft and others were truly about to cry.
Fortunately, the relevant agencies were indeed reviewing. They meticulously checked all documents and data, and conducted investigations non-stop for five consecutive days. It was said that there was only one more day before the results would be out.
However, it happened to be Saturday and Sunday, and the staff of the relevant departments took a break. Only on Monday did a piece of news that filled Raft and others with hope arrive.
That is, the purchasing group finally received approval. The members would board the plane to the United States on Monday evening, arrive in the United States on Wednesday morning, and it was expected that centralized bidding and negotiation could be carried out on the same day.
At this time, the soybean price in the futures market had risen to $580 per ton, and Raft and others' holding cost had also risen to $412 per ton.