Tech Hammer

USA, New York, Manhattan streets, Wall Street.

As the world's financial center, the saying that when Wall Street sneezes, the global economy will catch a cold has always been believed by countless people. God knows how many people are paying attention to every move of the Wall Street giants, and the most indispensable thing here is probably wisdom. People and madmen, and these smart people and madmen also compose the unique charm of Wall Street.

This narrow street with tall buildings has no shortage of stories about gamblers getting rich overnight, and there is no shortage of losers jumping from tall buildings. If various world-wide science and technology conferences are a collision ground for sparks of academic thought, then this is a collision ground for various views on wealth, investment and speculation, gambler thinking and financial management concepts. Countless ideas intersect and compete here, resulting in the consequences It will take this as the center of the circle and spread to the entire world.

Of course, whether they are geniuses or madmen, they all have one thing in common, which is being greedy. In fact, people who are not greedy enough will not survive on Wall Street. And successful people can often perfectly grasp the degree of greed, because once it exceeds that degree, it is likely to be blown to pieces.

Bernie Cushing, who graduated from MIT, is such an ambitious fund manager with a keen sense of smell and a gambler's mentality. However, this name is not yet well-known to the public because he has not been able to come up with a reasonable one after five years of working in the industry. In terms of performance, the return rate of the fund previously managed ranked among the top 100 fund managers on Wall Street. However, the return rate in the top 100 actually has a lot of merit, because people with a little knowledge of finance will understand that for a fund manager to control a 100 million fund The difficulty of managing a large-scale fund is completely different from that of controlling a tens of billions-scale fund.

Basically, as the size of funds under the control of a fund increases, the difficulty of management puts the pressure on fund managers also increasing exponentially, and the operations and operating methods of different amounts of funds are completely different.

Of course, Bernie Cushing never felt like he was any less than anyone else. He always believed that he was not yet successful just because the scale of funds he managed was not large enough. This led to him being dissatisfied with Cyber ​​Capital, the company he currently works for, because he believed that the company would most likely not give him a chance to show his talent. .

This private equity fund company is probably classified as a small and medium-sized private equity hedge fund company on Wall Street. In fact, with the continuous development of the financial industry, stories of big fish eating small fish are constantly happening, and the financial circle is becoming increasingly dissatisfied with small and medium-sized private equity funds. friendly. Cyber ​​Capital can survive to this day because there was a genius fund manager in the company before, but soon that fund manager was poached by Blackstone with a high salary...

Bernie Cushing also waited for his opportunity. After the company's star fund manager was poached, one of the company's largest hedge funds was temporarily handed over to him, who had the best previous performance, the year before last. The hedge fund, worth nearly $8 billion, was also considered a springboard for Bernie Cushing.

When he first took over the fund, in order to gain the trust of the management, he adopted prudent operating methods and continued the fund's previous operations. The final yield also continued the previous stability.

His operations have been steady since then, but no one knows that Bernie Cushing is just gaining the absolute trust of management and integrating his assistants while waiting for opportunities. Soon, Bernie Cushing thought he saw an opportunity.

Since the concept of the Metaverse was proposed in 2021, he has been carefully examining this technological concept about the future like a hunter. He has watched with cold eyes as the stock prices of companies have repeatedly hit new highs with the help of the Metaverse concept. His keen mind I sensed this was an opportunity!

It’s just that in 2021, he has not acted rashly. Because he knew very well that with more than 8 billion US dollars of capital in his hands, he could not leverage this industry at all, and at that time he had not yet fully managed the assistants around him. As time turned to this year, the fund he was in charge of was close to 16 % annual return was awarded by the company, which also gained him more trust. Based on the market conditions last year, this return was already justified.

But to be honest, this is not Bernie Cushing’s goal at all. His goal is to achieve an annual return rate of 500% or more on the funds in his hands, and to become one of the most famous fund managers in the world.

In order to get started, he set his sights on the much-hyped Metaverse project. This year, after consulting many experts, he finally decided to take action on this concept.

Since July this year, he has been cashing out funds and short-selling various metaverse concept stocks, including upstarts in the technology industry such as App Soul, Roblox, WIMI Hologram, etc., as well as Facebook. Such a high-profile American technology giant has begun to enter the metaverse layout. So far, the funds in his hands have short-sold more than six billion US dollars of the stocks of these companies in batches, and most of these funds have been exchanged for short-selling electronic contracts.

The pressure is still great. Although the trends of these stocks were relatively stable in July and August, in September, with the convening of the World Artificial Intelligence Conference, the concept of the Metaverse was once again hotly speculated, and related concept stocks ushered in another wave. Judging from the market's response, these stocks will be favored in the long term.

But gamblers' thinking is sometimes so stubborn.

Bernie Cushing still felt that the Metaverse concept stock would definitely explode. Although he did not understand how this concept would explode, he still continued to add an additional billion US dollars for short selling...

Of course, he is not completely gambling. In fact, he has prepared many actions. For example, he has made an agreement with a professor he once met at MIT that he will question the feasibility of the metaverse in some publications at a specific time. We have prepared millions of dollars in publicity expenses, waiting for the right time to infinitely amplify any news on the Internet that may cause harm to the concept of the Metaverse.

However, at this time, Bernie Cushing was facing unprecedented pressure. Although he was very careful in mobilizing funds, he even chose July when he had just finished his financial quarterly report, and his assistants had already They all became his own, but his incredible layout was still discovered by the management on Thursday.

What's even more tragic is that he failed to convince his boss, or he failed to completely convince his boss to give him enough time. The result of working hard in the boss's office was that he got a month's buffer time. His boss, Felix Hodgson, had only one request from him, that the mess should be sorted out within a month, and that all his subsequent operations must be handled by dedicated personnel sent by management.

Of course, Felix didn't say anything about solving this mess.

Because if he gives up those short-selling contracts now, it will cause at least a loss of more than one billion US dollars, and his future in this life will be ruined because of these more than one billion US dollars. Not to mention that this operation will become a permanent stain on him. There would be no place for him in this business, and he might even die because of it, because Bernie Cushing knew very well that the company would never classify this failure to report to management as a normal loss.

He stayed up all night yesterday, it was already early morning on Friday, and he was still looking for his own chance of survival online.

It was under this circumstance that Ning Wei's Weibo came into view.

Well, to be honest, the first time he saw this Weibo was on the entertainment section of a website he searched on Google, and he planned to skim it. After all, for a young Chinese man to post such a Weibo, he found it unconvincing.

However, just as I was about to click on the website and search for more useful information, I suddenly felt something was wrong.

If an unknown person in China posted this Weibo, why would it be reprinted by entertainment news on a relatively well-known European portal? Thinking of this, he stopped what he was doing, browsed the news carefully, and then quickly grasped the key point. This person's name is Ning Wei, a genius recognized in academic circles in mathematics and computers. He once attended the STOC Algorithm Conference with The European Snow Princess had a scandal, so her Weibo was fortunate enough to be listed in the entertainment section.

When he saw the name Ning Wei, Bernie Cushing immediately thought of the World Artificial Intelligence Conference that he had followed all the time. The speeches of scientists from Google and several other companies at the conference seemed to have mentioned the name of a talented young man from China. This is just because he is not very sensitive to Chinese names, so he cannot be sure for the time being whether the Chinese boy who posted on Weibo is really the guy mentioned at the conference.

Soon he found the full version of the video of the last conference on the Internet and began to compare it carefully. Then he was stunned and stunned with surprise! The two of them are really the same person! NingWei, that magical Chinese boy...

Happiness came so quickly that it even made him feel dizzy!

So all the theoretical founders of the last explosion of the concept of the metaverse are not optimistic about the concept of the metaverse?

Bernie Cushing picked up the phone almost tremblingly. Regardless of the fact that it was only five o'clock in the morning and the first ray of sunlight had not yet shined through the window, he made a call directly.

After ringing for a long time, the call was finally answered.

"Bernie, damn it, it's half an hour before I get up, are you crazy? Call me so early."

There were complaints on the phone, but at this time Bernie Cushing had completely calmed down and said loudly: "But Lloyd, have you forgotten that you didn't ask me to go for a morning run with you yesterday? Oh my god, who is it?" Those who are clamoring to start working out, don’t sleep, it’s time for us to get up and go for a morning run.”

After saying this, the other person was obviously stunned for a moment, and then replied: "Okay, Bernie, I forgot to sleep, but it's too early, it's only five o'clock! Okay, okay, you go for a morning jog in the park first Come on, I'll be there soon."

"OK!"

After hanging up the phone, Bernie Cushing put on a pair of sportswear, then opened the safe at home, took out two stacks of money from it, put it in his pocket, then walked out of the apartment with it in his pocket, and then started Jogging along, he passed by Daniel and the church. After sweating profusely, he ran to Battery Park Plaza outside Wall Street. Opposite the park was the Statue of Liberty, a famous tourist attraction in New York.

There are not many tourists on Wall Street in the early morning of autumn, and there are not even a few young people running in the morning. After all, it is common to stay up late if you want to survive here. People who have spent a day under heavy and high pressure prefer to go to the bar to drink. A glass of alcohol and noise to relax your tense nerves.

Soon he saw another jogging figure. Bernie Cushing waved to this alumnus, and then the two soon started jogging side by side.

"Bernie, uh... give me a reason, uh... otherwise I will definitely block you. I didn't go to bed until two o'clock last night, uh... you called me out for a morning run at five o'clock!"

Bernie Cushing didn't talk nonsense, he just took out the two stacks of bills he had just prepared from his pocket and handed them over directly.

"Here are 20,000 US dollars... You keep it... Don't worry... This money is not hot at all. Remember our agreement? You will go online later to look up a Chinese computer genius. His name is Ning Wei... He is here He posted a Weibo about eight hours ago... It's something similar to our Facebook! Post his Weibo and resume to the front page of the official website of the Wall Street Journal today... and you can still get $50,000! Of course, if you can guarantee better results, then it will be one hundred thousand dollars. This is not the first time we cooperate, Lloyd, you should be able to trust my credit...right?"

The man on the other side silently stuffed the banknotes in his hand into his pocket, and then complained: "But you shouldn't have called me at this time. What a coincidence, you know? Damn it! What a coincidence!"

"No time, Lloyd, I don't have time! And we just went for a morning run together, and I didn't send you any documents. You just coincidentally saw the news on the Internet. You can even explain that it was from me. I heard the news here, and then felt that it was necessary to publish it to the Wall Street Journal. Isn't this a very rule-based thing? Don't worry about the risks, there are no risks. All the money is old banknotes that I have prepared for a long time, as long as If you don’t misuse this money, no one will suspect you! Remember this is Wall Street! Lloyd!”

Bernie Cushing continued.

"Yes, this is Wall Street, okay, let's keep running, there's still time. Don't worry, but if the effect is surprisingly good, I think you won't mind increasing the dividend to me a little bit more. I heard something through the grapevine, Bernie, tell me, if you turn over this time, of course I deserve more, right?”

Bernie Cushing glanced sideways at the people around him and actually smiled: "Of course, we are brothers standing in the same boat. If I can succeed this time, what does it mean to pay a little more money? Tell me, You have a better plan, right?”

"I can't promise, I'm just fighting for the part I deserve. Well, I don't even know what that Hua Xiacai said on the damn Weibo. If I can make you stand up this time, I will give you twenty Ten thousand dollars, Bernie, in addition to these twenty thousand dollars, you have to prepare another one hundred and eighty thousand dollars. Isn’t that excessive?”

"Of course! That's it!"

"OK!"