December 31st—a day to remember!
Not only because it was the last day of 1981, but more importantly, because today an Asian man named Li Yi taught Wall Street’s elite a harsh lesson.
After three days of back-and-forth, Li Yi’s team finally completed the acquisition of the more than 169,000 gold futures contracts required for delivery.
Then, under the watchful eyes of Wall Street’s investment elite, Li Yi began the final settlement process with Sharp Corporation.
The settlement process was quite cumbersome, as it required extensive calculations.
Finally, just after 2:00 p.m., Sharp released the settlement result: $5.3449 billion.
According to Sharp’s breakdown, Li Yi’s initial investment was $2.015 billion. Using 5x leverage, he borrowed 169,000 gold futures contracts and sold them on the market at an average price of $59,600 per contract, raising $10.0724 billion.
Before delivery, Li Yi repurchased the same number of futures contracts from the market at an average price of $27,500 per contract, spending $4.6475 billion. The difference of $5.4249 billion between the two amounts represents Li Yi’s gross profit from this short position in gold futures.
This is referred to as gross profit because it does not yet account for institutional funding fees, team commissions, taxes paid to the tax authorities, and other expenses.
According to Sharp Company’s calculations, Li Yi’s daily funding cost was $1.38 million, and since he utilized the counterpart’s funds for a total of 53 days, the funding costs alone amounted to $73 million.
In addition, he must pay nearly $5 million in team commissions and over $2 million in other expenses. Therefore, while returning Li Yi’s $2.015 billion margin deposit, they must also settle $5.3449 billion in profits with him.
Of course, after receiving this sum, Li Yi would still need to pay 534 million in taxes to the New York tax authorities, leaving the remaining 4.81 billion as the net profit from this investment.
When Li Yi and Li Yunbao emerged from Sharp Corporation, everyone found it hard to contain their excitement.
It was insane—absolutely thrilling!
Apart from Li Yi, no one could have imagined that in just two short months, they would have made 4.8 billion US dollars on the New York futures market.
At the current exchange rate, that’s worth 37.8 billion Hong Kong dollars!
Just think about the wealthiest families on Hong Kong Island—whether it’s the Li family, the Ho family, or the Lo family—not a single one of them has that much money.
Never mind cash—not even their total assets amount to that much!
It’s safe to say they’ve witnessed an investment miracle.
In contrast to the excitement of Li Yi’s team, the reaction on Wall Street was entirely different.
When news broke that Li Yi had raked in over 5 billion US dollars (including taxes) in the futures market, the entire Wall Street was stunned.
Amid the shock, many felt anger and despair—they simply couldn’t believe that a foreigner had managed to rake in such a massive sum.
Overnight, newspapers were flooded with coverage of the story!
Some even called on the government to step in, investigate Li Yi, and prevent him from taking this massive sum out of the U.S. — and there were actually quite a few people who agreed with this view.
However, Li Yi wasn’t the least bit worried about this. After all, even a colonial government like the British Hong Kong administration would have had reservations about such a move—let alone the U.S.
If they actually did that, which foreign tycoons or capital would dare to come here to spend or invest in the future? After all, no one wants to be the “chives” that get cut down at any moment.
Furthermore, Li Yi was well aware that although the Thief Eagle’s domestic economy was not in great shape—plagued by overcapacity, high consumer inflation, and stagflation—it was still functioning relatively smoothly overall.
Therefore, although the current U.S. government remains shameless and brazen, it still has some limits.
At the very least, they still have some reservations and dare not brazenly raid private wallets.
Unlike in the decades following the turn of the millennium, when the desperate U.S. government, blinded by its losses, repeatedly pushed shamelessness to the limit, engaging in outright banditry—seizing the assets of wealthy Chinese nationals and the U.S. bank deposits of foreigners however it pleased.
So, after Sharp Corporation settled this payment, Li Yi immediately instructed Jimmy, the CFO of Green Brothers, to take an accountant and a lawyer to the tax office and pay every penny of the taxes owed.
After that, he began making preparations to return home!
However, before returning, he had two more things to do. The first was to instruct Corning to ship the goods as soon as possible.
It’s important to note that while this color TV production line was nominally destined for Hong Kong Island, it actually needed to be shipped to the mainland. This involved a transshipment process that had to be arranged in advance.
The reason he didn’t place the order with Corning under the name of a mainland company was primarily to save money.
After all, for the exact same products, the quotes Zaiying’s company provided to domestic enterprises were about 30% higher than those offered to companies in Hong Kong.
That’s just blatant double standards!
In fact, it’s not just the U.S.—countries all over the world are the same. When it comes to prices for Chinese buyers, there’s only one word: expensive!
The reason for this is simple: they know we have no choice!
“The weak get beaten”—this isn’t just true in politics and sovereignty, but also in the economy.
In today’s world, we are undoubtedly seen as an economically weak nation in the eyes of Western countries, and being bullied is inevitable.
Li Yi is just an ordinary person; he can’t change this situation right now, so he has no choice but to resort to this method: first procuring the equipment in Hong Kong, then shipping it back to the mainland from there!
As long as the goal is achieved, the process can be overlooked for now!
In addition to this, Li Yi also planned to pay a visit to the NASDAQ to invest in a few companies while the stock prices of those giant corporations were at a low point.
And so, just as the people on the “Eagle” side assumed that Li Yi, this man from the East, would leave New York with this massive sum of money, he instead led his team straight into the NASDAQ stock market and began a buying spree.
At $26 per share, Li Yi splashed out $96 million to buy 3.66 million shares of Apple stock, securing a 6% stake in the company, which had a market capitalization of $1.778 billion.
Thanks to his aggressive move, Apple’s stock price defied the market trend and rose by 7% that day.
Next, Li Yi spent $20 million to acquire a 6% stake in Berkshire Hathaway and $50 million to purchase a 5% stake in Johnson & Johnson…
In just a few short days, Li Yi poured $300 million into the New York stock market, investing in more than twenty companies of all sizes.
His investments ranged from dark-horse tech stocks like Apple to established investment firms like Berkshire Hathaway, as well as obscure startups founded just one or two years prior. His approach seemed utterly haphazard—he never investigated company performance or reviewed financial reports, simply pouring money in relentlessly.
Moreover, his stake in each company never exceeded 10%, but never fell below 5%!
More importantly, after pouring in the money, Li Yi doesn’t even visit the companies. He simply entrusts the Green Brothers firm to handle the shareholder reporting formalities, then washes his hands of the matter, completely indifferent to whether the stock price rises or falls.
If the local media hadn’t already uncovered Li Yi’s identity as a citizen of the Eastern superpower, those in the dark might have mistaken him for one of those Japanese investors with an inflated sense of self-importance!
Soon, his behavior was interpreted by various New York media outlets as a sign of capitulation.
They believed Li Yi had received warnings from certain unspecified forces and, fearing retribution, had chosen this method to “spit out” his money.
What they didn’t realize, however, was that Li Yi had invested in these companies precisely because he knew most of them were destined to become future giants—investing now was essentially a surefire profit.
As for not caring about stock price fluctuations, there was even less to say—he had no intention of selling right now, so why should he worry about whether the price went up or down!
On January 4, after completing the final transaction, Li Yi handed over all his remaining funds to Green Brothers, who transferred them through special channels to the account of Far East Securities on Hong Kong Island.
Afterward, Li Yi set off on his return journey with Li Yunbao, Lan Xinyi, and the others!