The Qing Dynasty is about to end

Chapter 652 is about to be harvested! (Please subscribe and vote)

Thursday, June 1858, 12.

on the beach.

There was a muffled sound of "bang".

On the top floor of the Vienna Bank Building, Van der Wier, the general manager of the Dutch East India Bank in China, slammed his coffee cup onto the carpet, splashing brown liquid all over the floor.

"Five hundred thousand shi! A full five hundred thousand shi of rice!" The red-nosed Amsterdam merchant tore open his silk tie, veins popping out of his neck. "The Japanese pariahs in Nagasaki stole enough food to feed a hundred thousand troops. Those diaper-wearing Japanese dwarfs must pay in gold!"

The British Consul Winchester poked the teak floor with his silver cane, making a thumping sound. "The twelve rice warehouses of Jardine Matheson in the British Concession in Nagasaki have all been burned to the ground. I will ask the British Far East Fleet to bombard Nagasaki!"

The diamond-studded Swiss pocket watch was slammed on the conference table. Nathaniel Rothschild, who was holding the express letter from Nagasaki, was also furious: "The losses caused to us by these Japanese mobs are far more than the hundreds of thousands of koku of rice. In the past two years, we have invested hundreds of thousands of pounds in Nagasaki, Osaka, and Yokohama in Japan, built ports and commercial ports, and even developed a profit model of exchanging copper coins for gold. Now with this incident, our business in Japan will definitely suffer a heavy blow!"

"If we want to recover our losses, we must suppress the so-called Nagasaki Republic as soon as possible," Van der Were tearing up the express letter in his hand, "We need to form an international intervention force! Warships from Britain, the Netherlands, Spain, and North Korea must appear in Nagasaki Bay at the same time. We must let those revolutionary thieves know what the wrath of the civilized world is!"

When he mentioned the international intervention forces, he deliberately ignored the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom - the Netherlands was now in a state of "undeclared war" with the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. If the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom sent troops to Japan, the Netherlands would never be able to recover its losses in Japan.

"Gentlemen," Charles Dent, who had no investment in Japan, suddenly reminded loudly, "For us, the real battlefield is not in Japan, but in Shanghai, in the Shanghai Stock Exchange! Will the riots in Japan affect Shanghai?"

Before Charles Dent finished speaking, hurried footsteps sounded. A white-skinned trader from the Vienna Bank pushed the door open and rushed in, panting: "The price of raw silk has soared by 30%! The stock of Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau has risen by 20%, the stock of Xuzhou Steel has risen by 13%, the price of rice and flour has fallen by 10%, and the price of Taiping Heavenly Kingdom bonds is also rising, and has risen by 5%."

"How is this possible?" Little Dent's silver cane fell to the ground with a thud, his mouth opened wide, and he couldn't speak for a while.

"Someone is taking advantage of this situation!" Nathaniel Rothschild reacted immediately, "Most likely it's those American nouveau riche. We must fight back immediately, otherwise we will have to add margin after today's close. This will push up the price of silver and suppress the price of gold!"

The Shanghai Stock Exchange now allows short buying and selling with leverage, and there is also a lot of futures trading in raw silk, grain, gold, silver, etc.

Of course, big conspirators like Rothschild, Little Dent, Chatton, and Van der Wiel are playing with futures and using leverage, but they don't do any risk hedging operations, but instead bet heavily in one direction.

For example, this time they held a large number of short positions in raw silk, shorted stocks and bonds (by borrowing stocks and bonds), and held a large number of long positions in gold and grain. This series of investments seemed to be a hedge, but in fact it was a "chain ship" that was tied together to form a linkage - the bet was that the things that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom "had" would fall, and the things that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom "lacked" would rise, which was actually to harvest the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

But the risk of such a game is self-evident. Once the opponent breaks through in a certain direction, it is possible to form a chain reaction and cause a collapse of the entire line. For example, if the stocks, bonds, and raw silk they shorted go crazy, they will have to add margin to avoid forced liquidation. But if they want to add margin, they have to exchange gold and British pounds (the current British pound is on the gold standard, which is equal to gold) for silver. This will push up the price of silver, and they are shorting silver.
If the cash on hand is not enough to fill the hole, they will have to close their long grain positions and collect margin and profits. However, grain prices will fall due to the closing of long positions, which may wipe out all their floating profits.

So Rothschild immediately grabbed his mink coat and rushed out the door. He didn't even call for a carriage to show off, but rushed all the way to the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
It was lunchtime in the lower hall of the Shanghai Securities and Commodities Exchange. JP Morgan, with his American-style side-parted hair, was smoking a Havana cigar and his left foot was on the redwood trading table. The assistant manager of Citibank waved the newly published Datong Newspaper and shouted to the traders in red vests, "Do you know why Japan's raw silk production has also plummeted?"

He paused for a moment, waiting for everyone to focus on him. "Because the comrades from the Republic of Nagasaki burned down all the silkworm breeding farms on Kyushu Island! Now the pricing power of raw silk in the entire Far East is in our hands!"

The price of "raw silk" on the blackboard has soared to 100 Taiping silver dollars in this morning's trading!

"Let's talk about the stolen food!" The third son of the Lehman family raised his glass of champagne and laughed, "The revolutionary army is not stupid! They can't give away all the food. They stole 800,000 koku of rice, and they will sell half of it to Shanghai! In addition, the Tokugawa shogunate and the Kyushu domains also have to sell rice to raise military funds."

This morning, the rice and flour contracts on the exchange also plummeted across the board!

"Finally, it's the arms business!" Morgan grabbed a copper bell and rang it vigorously, drowning out the noise in the room. "Whether it's the revolutionary army, the shogunate army, or the feudal army, they have to buy foreign guns and cannons to fight. The largest arsenal in East Asia is the Jiangnan Arsenal in Shanghai, and the Xuzhou Iron and Steel Plant provides steel for the Jiangnan Arsenal.
Before today, the stocks of Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau and Xuzhou Iron and Steel had already fallen by 50% from their highs - a huge blow!
This morning alone, these two stocks rebounded by 20% and 15%. For those who borrowed stocks to short sell, the losses are not small!

When Rothschild rushed into the trading hall, his silver cane dug into the teak floor. Although the Jewish banker had run all the way here, before entering the Shanghai Stock Exchange, he deliberately took a deep breath for two minutes outside and looked in the mirror for a while, so as not to let the people inside see how nervous he was.

"Gentlemen!" he said with a smile, "Anyone wants to buy shares of Xuzhou Iron and Steel and Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau? I have a lot here, as many as you want! Anyone else wants to sell grain and flour? Very good, I'll give you as much as you want! As for raw silk, he strode to the blackboard for futures trading and wrote the Arabic number '80' on it. I'll give you as much as you want!"

"Sir," the head of the Vienna Bank leaned close to Rothschild's ear, "We no longer have Taiping silver dollars."

"Use pounds! Throw out 10 pounds!" Rothschild said calmly, "There are still 500 million pounds of banknotes in the vault of the Vienna Bank!"

"Dang Dang Dang"

When the opening bell finally rang, Rothschild, Dent, Chatton, Deville and others all put on red vests and personally sat in the trading hall. Boxes of white pound banknotes were transported out of the vault of the Vienna Bank and exchanged for short or long contracts at the counter of the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

However, the real big players in the Shanghai Stock Exchange all know that the factor that can determine the outcome of this financial war is not in Shanghai but in the distant southern sea!
Off the coast of Guangdong, the setting sun is as red as blood, dyeing the turbulent sea surface into a golden red.

Six battered Shanghai-class armored cruisers formed a wedge-shaped array and sailed through the waves. On the deck of the flagship Tianjing, Admiral Wang Yan held a gold-plated telescope and looked at the fleet stretching for miles behind him - forty-eight American merchant ships flying the flag of the East India Company, fully loaded with 6 tons of American flour, with full sails, sailing with the wind.

"Report to the Admiral!" Ding Xianda, his face covered in soot, walked over on the creaking deck, the bandage on his left arm still oozing blood. "The statistical report has been written. This time, we sank a total of 2-ton Dutch steam cruisers, 2000 steam artillery ships below 4 tons, and 1000 sailing warships. Our losses were only 11 'Jianghai-class' armed merchant ships, 3 'Shanghai-class' cruisers, and another 2 armed merchant ships were damaged to varying degrees..."

(End of this chapter)