Chapter 194: Chapter 194: Harvest
Hong Kong, January 20, 1998, the coldest day of the year.
Feng Yiping, standing on the 22nd floor of an upscale residential building in Wan Chai, took one last look at the Golden Bauhinia Square not far away. On the night of 30 June last year, Feng Yiping was also here, using a high-powered telescope to watch the mighty PLA soldiers raise the five-starred red flag there at zero o'clock on 1 July.
As the five-star red flag rose, on the other side, Charles, who was probably the second most miserable person in history since Emperor Kangxi, might not be able to ascend the throne in his lifetime. He sadly left accompanied by the last governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten, who would continue to jump out from time to time in the future to bark a few disgusting comments.
Carrying a backpack and pushing a suitcase, Feng Yiping once again looked at the 'thousand-square-foot luxury home' that the Hong Kong population called this place, which he had rented for nearly a year, before locking the door and going downstairs.
He really wanted to buy a place, so that his sister, who was still a little bitter about not having become a Shanghainese, could become a Hongkonger directly. However, although Hong Kong property prices had already started to fall, there were still too many bubbles. Buying at this time would be a fight with oneself and money.
From 1994 to last year, in less than four years, Hong Kong's housing prices rose by nearly 70% overall. Many years later, a large number of mainland residents buying property in Hong Kong have just brought the room back to its current level. Those who later clamoured that mainland residents had driven up Hong Kong's housing prices should really look back at the current situation.
The people on the street are still hurrying along, but you can faintly see a sense of having survived a robbery on their faces. It's true that the past year hasn't been easy for these countries in the Asian region.
Ten years is like a predestined cycle. Before that, the Southeast Asian countries had experienced ten years of rapid growth in a row, and some countries and regions were crowned with the reputation of the Four Asian Tigers (South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong) and the Four Asian Tigers (Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia).
Take Thailand as an example. A farmer you meet on the outskirts of Bangkok, or even a street vendor, may be a member of the stock market army. At that time, they also felt that money came too easily, so they were keen on beachfront villas, European luxury goods, and Japanese electrical appliances.
Like the wealthy class in the United States, they sent their children to private schools and went on stylish annual vacations to Europe. Even small business owners began preparing to buy Mercedes-Benzes.
However, this prosperity was already in turmoil from the beginning of 1997.
The situation finally became clear the day after Hong Kong's return to Chinese sovereignty. After several attempts to resist, the Thai government was forced to announce that it would abandon the exchange rate system that had pegged the Thai baht to the US dollar for 13 years, and was forced to announce the implementation of a floating exchange rate system.
Subsequently, the governments and central banks of the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and other countries, after a few symbolic and feeble attempts to resist, all gave up defending their own currencies, allowing international speculators to call the shots and run rampant for a time.
In November, the crisis spread to South Korea, and then dragged in the Japanese financial industry, which had made huge investments in South Korea. This led to a series of bankruptcies of Japanese banks and securities companies, and the Southeast Asian financial turmoil officially evolved into the Asian financial crisis.
In this game of international hot money looting and money grabbing, Feng Yiping was like an insignificant little shrimp, following them around and shorting everything from the Thai baht to the Philippine peso, Malaysian ringgit, Singapore dollar, Indonesian rupiah, and South Korean won. In the middle of it all, in October, he also shorted US and Hong Kong stocks. Last month, he concentrated all his funds and used ten times leverage, and finally shorted the South Korean won, which was also the time when he made the most profit from a single transaction.
Although at the beginning, as governments around the world resisted, he also lost some money, the final result was quite impressive. As his profits increased, from initially not being eligible to apply for financing leverage, to later 5x and 10x leverage, the US dollar assets in his UBS account also rose steadily. It has now reached eight digits, although it still starts with a 1, but he is already very satisfied.
In the past, he was just an ordinary low-end UBS customer. These days, senior UBS staff have contacted him to sell him various financial products, but he has remained unmoved. He has just bought some more Apple stock. Although Steve Jobs returned last year, Apple's share price is still hovering at a low ebb.
Of course, some people lose money when others make it.
In Thailand, people who lamented the ease of making money a while ago have now lost their jobs, then their cars. The paint on their new house hasn't even dried yet, and they have to sell it. Their children have been transferred to public schools, and their romantic and luxurious European trips have been cancelled.
Many private university students can't adapt to this change, and in order to maintain their dignity, they can only rent better clothes and shoes now.
Although the scenery is still so beautiful and moving, and the high-rises are still so closely packed, there is, however, an unfathomable chasm between the once-rich and the now-down-and-out.
In Indonesia, even the children of the later president Suharto, who was notorious for corruption and topped the World Bank's list of corrupt rich people, had to sell their companies to avoid losing everything.
In Malaysia, the top ten richest people have lost tens of billions of dollars in the stock market alone.
Of course, Feng Yiping, who has made a small fortune, does not feel guilty at all. Soros also said, 'In terms of financial operations, there is no such thing as moral or immoral. It's just a kind of manipulation.'
In addition, as he said, even without this speculation, what was to come would still come.
It is also true that these Southeast Asian countries, immersed in the atmosphere of high growth, have a seriously overvalued local currency, but unlike China, they have not taken regulatory measures. They originally had insufficient foreign exchange reserves, and the stock and foreign exchange markets were not regulated. The currency was still freely convertible. Once their foreign exchange reserves were depleted, they could only watch helplessly as hungry wolves made waves in their domestic foreign exchange and stock markets.
Even when our country's foreign exchange reserves became the world's largest, they refused to relax controls. There must have been considerations in this regard. After all, no matter how much a country has in foreign exchange reserves, it is still not enough to compete with the hot money that can be concentrated in the international market.
Moreover, there was the example of the Soviet Union, which was dragged down by the United States and other Western countries through economic means. It is normal to have stricter financial controls.
On the bus to the airport, listening to the two people in the front row who were still shaken, they said, 'It's finally over! Fortunately, although I lost some money in the stock market, not to mention those I bought before, the building I invested in last year is still doing well.'
Feng Yiping looked at them with pity from behind, and really wanted to tell them, 'Honey, you're thinking too beautifully. It's just the end of one Chapter, it's far from over.
Yes, starting from the second half of this year, this storm will usher in a new wave. Just take Hong Kong as an example, the total market value of the stock market this year will evaporate by more than 2 trillion Hong Kong dollars. After that, the property market will also plummet. The person in front of you must have bought his property with a mortgage, and he has more than one property.
By then, he will definitely become a negative asset owner. Alas, I don't know if the person in front of me will become a member of the army of people jumping off buildings.
When entering the airport, he couldn't help but glance back at the two of them. The middle-aged man in the trench coat, who had tried hard to look refined, looked at a child with pity, almost as if he were looking at a dead person. He almost blurted out a mainland Chinese remark, but then hesitated a little, not sure whether Feng Yiping was a mainland Chinese.
There was no way around it. These Hong Kong people, even if they had lost their pants, still had a sense of superiority in front of their mainland compatriots.
But Feng Yiping's year in Hong Kong had not been a waste. In his spare time, apart from going to the libraries of several universities to read and recharge his batteries, he had also fully appreciated all aspects of Hong Kong—except, of course, those off-limits to minors. His dress sense had also moved towards the affluent classes, and he spoke Cantonese and English more fluently. What's more, with tens of millions of US dollars in the bank as a foundation, he naturally had a strong foundation, so it was normal for him to be unable to tell the difference.
After a few hours' flight, in the afternoon, the plane finally arrived at the provincial capital. After collecting his luggage and exiting the airport terminal, he saw his parents and sister, who were waving at him at the exit.