From legendary short seller to god of American capital

Chapter 420 The Life of a Bullet: A Stormy Weekend Trading Day

Saturday, April 22nd. 4 AM.

The sky over Brooklyn was still pitch black, and across the river, the Manhattan Peninsula skyline was dotted with only a few scattered lights, like a sleeping giant occasionally blinking its eyes.

But on the second floor of the mobile brick factory in Williamsburg, the world is roaring at a frequency of 8000 times per hour.

Bang—click—whoosh! The Gutenberg rotary printing press, like a steel monster breathing, pressed 32 pages of the Wall Street Journal prototypes onto the six-foot-diameter lead cylinder with its scalding signature with each rotation.

The strong, pungent smell of ink, mixed with the complex odor of damp paper, condensed into a hazy mist in the steam-filled workshop.

The first finished product slid off the conveyor belt, and the front page headline boldly proclaimed, "Dancers on the Rope: Financial Crisis and Stock Price Mystery of National Rope Company Executives."

The dark, cursive script looked startling under the gaslight. Perhaps the first batch of ink wasn't heated enough, as the words "rope" were not printed clearly.

The stack of newspapers glided across the greasy conveyor belt, where it was caught by a pair of calloused hands, folded in half, piled into a stack of 30, quickly tied with hemp rope, and tossed into a wooden crate with a snap.

The wooden crates were pushed onto a handcart, the wheels rolling over the creaking wooden floorboards, and soon they reached the back of the freight wagon.

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Five two-wheeled freight wagons waited there, the horses pawing restlessly at the stone slabs, snorting white breath. The drivers remained silent, simply loading and unloading with practiced ease.

The wooden crate was thrown onto the container with a thud, sounding somewhat abrupt in the quiet of the early morning.

The first carriage started moving, the driver cracked his whip, and the horses trotted along the cobblestone streets of Williamsburg. The wheels rolled over the wet streets, past closed bakeries and cheap pubs with signs that read "Open".

The newspapers on the train trembled slightly inside the wooden crate, like a group of restless ghosts about to be released.

The carriage drove onto the Brooklyn Bridge as dawn broke in the east. The carriage wheels made a rhythmic, hollow sound on the wooden bridge surface, blending with the gradually rising urban noise from Manhattan in the distance.

Through the gaps in the bridge cables, one can see the silhouettes of the granite spires of Wall Street—the end point of this newspaper, and perhaps the battlefield.

The carriage descended the bridge and entered the financial district.

The streets narrowed abruptly, the buildings grew taller, and the shadows cast by the roadside deepened. The carriage skillfully navigated Nassau Street and its back alleys, finally stopping at the back door of a still-dormant upscale club.

The driver whistled a short whistle, and the door opened. A sleepy-eyed servant came out and carried away two bundles of newspapers.

One portion was taken out separately and placed on a long table covered with a linen table. Next to the newspaper was a silver coffee pot and...

Warm croissant.

A hand picked up the newspaper.

The hand was steady, the nails were neatly trimmed, and the cuffs were made of crisp French linen, paired with simple gold-plated cufflinks.

The man unfolded the Wall Street Journal in his hand, but before he could even read it, footsteps sounded at the table.

"What time is it? Why are you up so early? Didn't you have fun last night?" someone asked.

The man smiled, flicked his gold-cased pocket watch with a clink, and said, "6:45 a.m., I'm doing well after a good rest."

"Okay—but it's the weekend, so the stock market is only open for half a day. There's not much going on."

The man smiled and nodded. "That's usually how it is, but Saturdays also mean that Wall Street is at its most relaxed."

"What newspaper are you reading?"

The man waved the newspaper in his hand. "The Wall Street Journal, a little-known tabloid, but it's good because it only reports on things in the financial district."

"Okay! You keep eating, I'm going to the restroom!"

After smiling and seeing his companion off, the man didn't touch his coffee. Instead, he put a croissant in his mouth, then unfolded the newspaper, his eyes landing on the front page of The Wall Street Journal.

"—The words aren't even printed clearly," the man frowned, glancing past the word "rope," his gray eyes slowly reading line by line from left to right.

He stopped chewing when he read the third line.

He put down his bread when he read the details of Dorsey's personal debts.

As he finished reading the report, the morning light shone through the glass window onto his profile and tense jaw.

The man stared at the newspaper for a full minute without moving, then forcefully pulled off the bell rope by the wall.

Almost immediately, a young clerk in a black coat appeared at the restaurant entrance, holding a notebook in his hand.

"Mr. White, what can I do for you?"

"I have three things to do, please take note," White's voice was calm, but his speech unconsciously quickened. "First, immediately contact our clients who hold positions in National Rope Company and advise them—no, require them—to liquidate their positions within half an hour before the market opens. Use market orders, and disregard cost!"

"Second, suspend all long positions in this stock in our company account, and close all existing long positions within five minutes of the market opening."

"Third," White paused, his gaze sweeping again over the somewhat blurry headline in the *Chinese Street Daily*, "call our friends at Hanover Bank. Ask them one question: if the news report is true, then they need to clarify..."

Tell me, will the loan to the National Rope Company be renewed?

"Yes, sir!" The clerk quickly finished writing and turned to leave.

"Repeat that!"

"First, let all customers—"

The clerk repeated it, and White nodded in agreement.

"And one more thing!" White tapped the newspaper on the table. "From now on, you'll see this newspaper every morning before I drink my coffee!"

"clear!"

The clerk disappeared through the doorway. White picked up the newspaper again, but this time he didn't read the article. Instead, he turned to the inside pages and found a line of small print in the corner:

Issuer: Dow Jones & Company.

Editor-in-Chief: Charles H. Dow.

White stared at the name for a long time, then neatly folded the newspaper and placed it on a corner of the dining table.

Outside the window, the Manhattan sky was rapidly brightening. The streets were beginning to fill with commuters, and the sounds of horse-drawn carriages, tram bells, and newsboys gradually blended into the familiar symphony of the city's mornings.

White stood up, his gaze passing through the window and focusing on the New York Stock Exchange building three blocks away.

The game starts in 2 hours and 55 minutes!

At 9:50 a.m., a dozen brokers gathered in a corner of the New York Stock Exchange, their faces grave.

"There are 25,000 sell orders for National Rope Company, all at exactly $95. Who the hell did that?"

"I don't know. They're scattered across a dozen or so seats."

Is what the Wall Street Journal is saying true?

"Someone from the National Rope Company just contacted me, wanting to mortgage his remaining stock—"

A brief silence fell over the crowd, then a broker suddenly raised his voice, saying, "After the market opens, we need to execute our clients' stop-loss orders at $95 first!"

"Aren't you going to take another look?"

"Look at you!" the broker said in a low voice, "People will die! Clear out the stop-loss orders first. Then call the clients who haven't placed stop-loss orders!"

At 10:00 AM sharp, the first transaction price for National Rope Company was announced. A broker scrambled to sell his client's 450 shares to Reading Company's floor broker, Elliott, shouting, "I have stock here, all for you!"

Before the counter traders could even record the opening price, a floor trader from a major brokerage firm signaled a sell: "Market price! Selling 3200 shares of National Rope Company. Anyone have them? Make an offer!"

In addition, several other brokers seized the opportunity to chime in, "I'm also offering market price! 200 shares!"

"Stop-loss order! Market price!"

A series of market orders left the brokers at the industrial stock counters looking at each other in bewilderment. This meant that buyers could bid freely, and it also meant that the floor brokers who had placed orders for 25,000 shares of Reading were quickly ignored. Everyone had thought that this person's sell order would be bought up in large quantities, but to everyone's surprise, only 450 shares were traded.

Everyone had the same question in their minds: Had these people gone mad? Why were they in such a hurry to dump their stocks?!

There were two floor traders at the industrial stocks counter. They were the dedicated traders for the National Rope Company. Seeing the market turn so one-sided, they were a little panicked.

The two men exchanged a glance, and one of them lowered his voice and said, "Don't rush, wait until the first wave of selling is over before taking over—I'll go make a call!"

"Okay—you have to hurry, I'm afraid I don't have enough credit!" the other person urged.

After the two parted ways, the first trader rushed to the business room in the exchange lobby and made a phone call to his boss.

"What the hell?" The voice on the other end of the phone was grumpy from just being woken up, and there was a woman's grumbling and complaining beside it.

"Boss, something big has happened! There's a competitor dumping shares; they've placed a sell order for 25,000 shares at $95—and there are also a lot of open market orders today. I think—something's wrong here!" the trader said urgently.

There was a moment of silence on the other end of the phone. "How much? How much did you say?"

"$95! 25,000 shares!"

"Damn it!!" the person on the other end of the phone suddenly roared in fury—"Hold the line at $92! Use your 50,000 share quota and hold the line at $92. I'm going to find out what's going on right now."

"Okay, boss!" The trader felt relieved; having a quota made things much easier.

"Remember, it absolutely cannot fall below $90. I'm going to go find out what's going on right now!"

The call was abruptly ended, and the trader also hung up, clenching his fists tightly before rushing back to the trading floor.

At this moment, the trading floor for industrial stocks was already bustling with noise. The traders inside were frantically flashing buy or sell signals, their forehead veins bulging, as if they were giving their opponents the middle finger.

"1000 shares, this is a large order!"

"If you lower the price by even half a point, I'll take it—lower the price, hurry up!"

The trader squeezed through the crowd and was astonished to find his partner accumulating large amounts of stock from the sellers.

The trader was getting impatient. He roughly grabbed his partner by the collar and whispered in his ear, "Didn't I tell you to let the first wave of selling pass? The boss told us to just hold at $90!"

His companion, already irritated from being abruptly interrupted, yelled at his partner, "Open your eyes, you bastard! What's the National Rope Company's stock price right now?" He pointed at the exchange's stock recorder at the counter, "It's $88! If I hadn't intervened to support the price, the first wave of selling would have driven it below $85!!"

The trader was startled and loosened his grip. He glanced at the counter and saw a forest of arms raised high, all gesturing the famous sell signal to the two traders on his side.

"You're buying shares in the National Rope Company? Great! I have 350 shares here!!"

A person rushed up to him, holding up a service request form and shouting.

At 10:20 a.m., in the private room of Reading Company, Larry was sitting in front of the quotation machine, his fingers on the table, watching the quotation machine spit out paper tape.

Upon hearing the latest price from the National Rope Company, Larry grabbed a pencil and jotted down a few numbers in the notebook beside him.

"Clang! Clang!"

Baruch knocked on the door, then pushed it open and rushed in, saying hurriedly, "We've only completed 1200 transactions in the trading room."

"But the rope company's stock price has already fallen below $85. Should we move the sell orders down?"

Larry waved his hand, "No rush—let the retail investors close their positions first! Let the panic linger a while—are there any large funds buying the dip right now?"

"Not yet, all the buy orders are retail orders, the largest one was 5000 shares bought at $88."

"Alright! Wait a minute." Larry nodded silently.

After Baruch closed the door and left, Larry was left alone in the private room. The next National Rope Company's offer he heard was still falling, so Larry simply took out a double eagle gold coin from his pocket and fiddled with it in his hand, then walked to the window to look at the street scene outside.

Outside the private room, the trading hall was noisy and chaotic.

Larry didn't even need to look to know that retail investors were making a fuss over the price chart.

The sunlight outside the window was a bit too bright. Larry squinted at a newsboy on the street corner, who was holding up a newspaper and shouting, "Breaking news! National Rope Company in scandal! This is an exclusive from the Wall Street Journal!"

Larry smiled to himself, thinking that the newsboys in New York were shrewd enough to know what people on Wall Street cared about. Once they knew which news was most important, they immediately started marketing it. This could be considered a form of "traffic-driven thinking" from the late 19th century.

The price quote machine was clicking away incessantly in Larry's ears. His ears were constantly perked up, listening to the price quotes it was uttering. To him, the monotonous sound was like heavenly music.

A few minutes later, Larry figured the next national rope company's quote would be coming out soon. Just as he turned around, he heard hurried footsteps outside the door again.

"Mr. Livingston!" Baruch flung open the door, skipping the usual polite knock, and shouted into Larry's eyes, "The stock price is starting to rebound! Big money is coming in!"

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