Material Empire

"Old Pi, you're thinking too much. Those officials from the Planning Commission are not that smart. Besides, even if they had such a plan, they wouldn't do it. Can they just watch the price of steel go up like this?" Sun Zhenjiang said with some disapproval.

"What if they did this on purpose just to lure us into being fooled?" Pittston asked. He was as optimistic as Sun Zhenjiang before, but now he suddenly thought of the possibility of being fooled, and his thoughts were completely different. This is the case with many things. When you don't think of a certain possibility, you will be optimistic, but once someone breaks the key, all the optimism will collapse in an instant, and all the doubts that you didn't notice before will be completely eliminated. emerge.

"Sun, if you think about it, the Planning Commission has been releasing steel into the market, but they don't release enough steel each time, just enough for us to eat them all. If they release 2 million or even 5 million tons at one time, we It is impossible to digest these supplies so boldly. In the past, we thought it was because the Planning Commission did not have enough reserves in their hands to do this. But now it seems that they have always had tens of millions of tons in their hands reserves, but each time it only sells hundreds of thousands of tons, it is clear that it does not intend to really control the market, but intends to give us an illusion." Pittston analyzed convincingly.

"You mean, the purpose of that old man Wang Hongsheng is to make us eat what he throws out? But, what is his purpose in doing this?" Sun Zhenjiang still couldn't figure out what enmity he had with old man Wang. Sorry, old man Wang has no reason to cheat him like this.

Pittston shrugged his shoulders, not bothering to explain why. As a foreigner, he sees problems from many different angles from Sun Zhenjiang. Sun Zhenjiang felt that it was impossible for the government to intentionally set up a scheme to defraud a company, but Pittston felt that intrigues in the market are a very normal thing. If you can plot against the other party, why should the other party not plot against you?

"No matter what his purpose is, the reality is like this. We thought that the Planning Commission only had 10 million tons of steel, but in fact they have at least 20 million tons. This figure is far beyond our expectations. It is even more terrifying What's more, I even suspect that they have more than 20 million tons of steel in their hands, and they are about to throw it out when we are unable to eat it, and give us a fatal blow." Pittston said.

"20 million tons?" Sun Zhenjiang finally calmed down and thought about it, because the possibility Pittston described was really too dark.

In order to carry out this steel hype, Sun Zhenjiang spent a lot of capital. He bribed several officials within the Planning Commission and asked them to disclose the internal information of the Planning Commission to him. To be on the safe side, he only kept in touch with these officials, and these few people didn't know each other that other people were Sun Zhenjiang's insiders, so there was no possibility of deceiving Sun Zhenjiang with a unified caliber.

From these officials, Sun Zhenjiang learned about the entire plan of action of the Planning Commission on the reform of the steel supply and marketing system, and also knew that the Planning Commission had prepared 10 million tons of steel reserves in order to prevent excessive price rises. Because this number is of great importance, Sun Zhenjiang repeatedly verified it many times, and even asked people to visit several large steel factories to confirm that the number is correct. It is precisely because he has such core information that he has such great confidence to do a big job.

When the Planning Commission used reserves one after another to stabilize prices, Sun Zhenjiang felt confident and not worried. He first asked Liang Zhaohui, Ling Yiping and others to eat the steel, and only when the funds of these little brothers were almost exhausted, he began to use his own funds and the funds imported into China through underground channels from the Jiezi Fund to continue hoarding the goods. Waiting for the planning committee's reserve steel to run out, he can make waves.

He was a little bit surprised when the amount of steel thrown out by the Planning Commission exceeded the originally expected range of 10 million tons, but then he got news from the Planning Commission that the steel was raised for a certain reason, that the Planning Commission Last hope. Looking at the rising steel prices in the market, coupled with the rumors that the central leadership is extremely dissatisfied with the work of the Planning Commission, Sun Zhenjiang believes that the Planning Commission is indeed at the end of its rope, and finally collected hundreds of thousands of tons of steel. A big market is just a drop in the bucket and cannot solve any problems.

Sun Zhenjiang didn't notice that when he explained the plan committee's bailout actions time and time again with an optimistic attitude, the plan commission had released more than 20 million tons of steel, which was more than double the figure he had originally grasped. Through the use of strategic reserves or overtime production, it may be possible to increase the supply of hundreds of thousands or 1.8 million tons, but it is absolutely impossible to say that it has increased by a total of 10 million tons.

However, this absolutely impossible thing actually happened, isn't this a strange thing? Since Pittston's statistics are correct, there is only one explanation, that is, the Planning Commission has concealed its strength from the very beginning. And what is the purpose of concealing strength, can Sun Zhenjiang not think of it?

"Old Pi, tell me, did the Planning Commission get support from somewhere?" Sun Zhenjiang asked.

"Who can provide support to the China Planning Commission? Unless it is..." Pittston was suddenly stunned when he said this. He thought of a possibility: import!

To come to China to speculate on steel, Pittston certainly could not have thought that the Chinese government would import steel to make up for the gap between supply and demand. Jiezi Fund has predicted this, and believes that the Chinese government is extremely short of foreign exchange. Even if it wants to import steel, the quantity is very limited, which is not enough to influence the entire market. During this period of time, Pittston was operating in China, and Jiezi Fund was not idle abroad, and monitoring the Chinese government's procurement behavior abroad was an important task for them. Feedback information from abroad shows that the Chinese government has not increased the scale of steel imports, which makes Pittston also relax his vigilance.

However, when the China Planning Commission is now continuously producing steel products, Pittston suddenly realized that there may be a flaw in the monitoring of the Chinese government's overseas procurement behavior by the Meson Fund, because only the international market can provide China. With such a large-scale steel supply, it is impossible for China's domestic steel companies to increase their production capacity out of thin air.

Thinking of this, Pittston picked up the phone, dialed the headquarters of Meson Fund in the United States directly, and raised his doubts to the staff there.

"Pittston, you should trust our work." Kupp, the technician in charge of international market intelligence collection, muttered dissatisfied on the phone, "We are monitoring the actions of several major Chinese import and export companies in the international market. The amount of imported steel is not higher than it used to be."

"Kup, have you only monitored the business of those import and export companies? Have you ever paid attention to the import behavior of other Chinese institutions?" Pittston asked.

Cooper said: "Don't be stupid, Pittston, the Chinese government has a division of labor in the procurement of bulk commodities. Except for these companies, other companies are not responsible for steel imports. As for those enterprise-level sporadic purchases, you will not Do you think it will have any impact on the macro data?"

Pittston said: "You are talking about the division of labor under normal circumstances, but the current situation is not normal. I very much suspect that the China Planning Commission has adopted a cover-up. A small company that is not noticeable comes to import steel. Haven't you conducted a survey to the major steel markets around the world? Haven't you asked all the large steel companies? By the way, you'd better go to the shipping market to find out if there is any shipment to China recently For steel ships, the transportation of tens of millions of tons of steel is not a trivial matter, and an ordinary 30,000-ton bulk carrier needs to transport hundreds of times."

"Well, if you really need this data..." Kupp seemed to compromise helplessly. In his heart, he had already realized that he might have indeed made a mistake in experience. But can this blame him? Steel market, steel mills, shipping companies, with so many clues, how could they keep an eye on it every day?

It has to be said that, as a multinational speculator, Meson has very dense tentacles. In less than an hour, Kupp's phone call reached China. The information he provided to Pittston made Pittston and Sun Zhenjiang dumbfounded.

"We have found out that there is a Chinese company named Daqin Group that has purchased 12 million tons of steel in the Japanese and European markets in the past two months," Kupp said.

"What, 12 million tons of steel! SHIT, how could you know nothing about such a large-scale transaction!" Pittston only hated that the phone line was not thick enough, otherwise he would have gotten in and rushed to the United States to strangle Cooper to death up.

"I'm sorry, Pittston." Cooper's voice was a little timid, "The transaction they conducted was very covert. In Japan, they purchased steel from Nippon Steel and other companies through Chunshan Company as an intermediary. I asked Nippon Steel not to disclose the details of this deal. In Europe, they contacted the steel tycoon Leonardo. I don’t know what kind of internal agreement they reached. Leonardo actually agreed to apply for 2 billion for him. U.S. dollar seller's credit for their steel imports from the European market."

"Daqin Group..." Sun Zhenjiang stood beside Pittston, chanting the name, his face turned pale, "I heard people from the planning committee say that this is old man Wang's secret weapon. The company has high hopes. I have asked people to investigate. They do have three steel plants, but their annual production capacity is only more than 10 million tons, so I didn’t take it to heart. Now it seems that I was wrong. Old man Wang used This company acts as a cover to import steel."

"This means that the Planning Commission has been aware of the insider from the very beginning, and deliberately released wrong information through the insider. It has only one purpose, and that is to make us fall for it!" Pittston put down the phone and said in a cold voice.