Reborn in 2012, building a new energy empire

On the last Tuesday of August, soybean meal prices surged to 4220 yuan in the morning session before quickly falling back, barely closing above the 4200 yuan mark.

Jiang Haoran stared at the candlestick with the long upper shadow for a full minute.

"The time is right," he muttered to himself, then got up and walked toward the trading room.

Pushing open the door, the room was bathed in soft light filtered through the curtains, with only a few screens flashing red and green numbers. Two traders were intently watching the market, their fingers hovering over the keyboards.

"Accelerate the reduction of positions." Jiang Haoran's voice was exceptionally clear in the quiet room. "Starting tomorrow, the company account will proactively reduce its positions by 150 lots per day."

"The strategy remains unchanged: place orders in a dispersed manner, with the price anchored above 4200 yuan. Execute orders passively, without actively dumping them or holding positions for too long."

"Understood, Mr. Jiang," the trader replied in a deep voice.

Back in his office, Jiang Haoran accessed his personal futures account.

He still had a thousand lots left in his position, with substantial unrealized profits. Without hesitation, his fingers flew across the keyboard, placing sell orders one after another.

4230, 4235, 4240... The price lists were scattered across several different price levels, with each order being small in quantity, like a finely woven net, waiting for the market's final frenzy.

After doing all that, he picked up his phone and sent a brief message to Fatty Li: "Above 4200, it's time to clear out your positions."

He replied almost instantly: "Brother Hao, should we sell now? I saw on the forums that people are saying we should aim for 4500..."

Jiang Haoran typed: "Execute according to plan. Eat the body of the fish, leave the tail for others."

The dialog box displayed "The other party is typing..." After a long pause, Fatty Li replied with only one word: "Okay".

Over the next two days, the market witnessed a final frenzy.

On Wednesday, prices rose again amid wild fluctuations, reaching a high of 4258 yuan.

On Thursday, the battle between bulls and bears intensified, with the price soaring to a high of 4269 yuan during the session, but then encountering fierce selling pressure and falling back to around 4240 yuan at the close.

Jiang Haoran's sell orders were all swallowed up by the market's greedy buying.

When the price was briefly lifted to 4245 yuan again on Thursday afternoon, his last long position in his personal account was filled.

Clearance sale complete.

He leaned back in his chair, looking at the final figures on the settlement statement: personal futures account equity, 11.8 million (excluding the 5 million withdrawn).

Starting with 150,000, it increased 100 times in just over three months.

Almost simultaneously, my phone vibrated.

Fatty Li's message was filled with unbelievable excitement: "Brother Hao... Brother Hao! I bet it all! Including the reductions I made before, my principal has increased... increased eighteen times! Brother Hao, I..."

Jiang Haoran could imagine the incoherent rambling on the other end of the phone, but his reply remained calm: "Congratulations. The money is only yours once it's in your pocket."

He then checked the company's accounts.

Jiutian Investment's positions are also being exited in an orderly manner as planned, with long positions reduced to 200 lots, preserving sufficient flexibility.

On the very Friday he cleared out his personal positions, the market situation suddenly changed.

First, a model forecast from an international meteorological agency circulated during trading, stating that the core drought-stricken areas of North America "may" receive sporadic rainfall in the next two weeks. The wording was cautious, but in a market where emotions were extremely tense, any "maybe" was amplified into "negative news."

Following this, a leading domestic financial media outlet published a commentary at midday with a sharp headline: "Has the soybean meal bull market reached its end? Beware of the convergence of speculative bubbles and policy risks!"

The combination of the two news items was like pouring a bucket of cold water on a red-hot iron plate.

At 1:30 p.m., a sudden sell order of tens of thousands of shares crashed into the market, causing prices to plummet.

4180, 4150, 4100... The key psychological levels were breached one after another, and a steep, heart-stopping bearish candlestick appeared on the intraday chart. Chat rooms and forums were instantly flooded with screams of "Collapse!" and "Run for your lives!"

Panic spread like a plague.

Profit-taking was rampant, and stop-loss orders were forced to liquidate positions, resulting in a brutal sell-off. Prices plummeted, falling almost without resistance below 4050, reaching a low of 4015 yuan.

Jiang Haoran looked at the screen calmly.

This doesn't seem like a technical adjustment; it's more like a complete loosening of high-level holdings and a reversal of trend forces.

However, when the price touched the psychological threshold of 4000 points, buying interest began to emerge.

This wasn't the aggressive surge of the past, but rather a steady, gradual accumulation of shares. The decline gradually slowed, and prices formed a new consolidation platform between 4000 and 4100.

At the close, the price barely settled at 4045 yuan, with the daily candlestick showing a huge bearish candle with an extremely long lower shadow, and the trading volume reaching an all-time high.

A textbook example of high diving.

Jiang Haoran closed the stock trading software and casually opened the futures forum he frequented. The pinned post had a blood-red title: "4250, all liquidated, can't survive."

The poster's ID is "Mortgaged Property All-in".

The post contained only a few sentences, but every word was filled with despair: "I had 1 million yuan in principal, shorted 3500 positions, added to my losing positions, mortgaged my house, sold my car, and exhausted all my online loans... Just now, at 4250 yuan, everything was liquidated. I have nothing left, and I even owe the platform more than 300,000 yuan. My wife and children don't even know... I really can't go on living."

The comments below were few and far between, ranging from numb "Another one," to cold "I advised you to cut your losses," to sympathetic "Brother, I'll be waiting for you on the rooftop."

Jiang Haoran's fingertip paused on the mouse for a moment.

This ID, along with the despair that pierced through the screen, precisely struck a heavy and similar point deep in his memory.

He is another "Wang Decai" from another time and space, following the same path and ending the same way.

Historical details may not be perfectly replicated, but the way the market, like a razor, scrapes away the vulnerabilities of human nature is always strikingly similar.

When collective emotions reach extremes, such tragedies cease to be accidental and become an inevitable consequence.

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and then closed the webpage.

The afterglow of the setting sun slanted in through the glass window, casting long shadows on the smooth tabletop, blending with fragmented images of the market from my memory, mixed with gold dust and blood.

The market has never changed its cruel nature; it is merely an ever-running furnace that repeatedly refines the ancient and stubborn desires and fears in human nature.

This time, he stood by the furnace, acting as a calm observer and a limited participant.

He not only weathered the final frenzy in the financial markets unscathed.

More importantly, he has gained enough capital and clarity from this experience to now turn his ship around and sail towards a more solid, longer-term, and more value-creating business plan.

Below, the lights of Lujiazui illuminate one after another, outlining the dazzling yet cold silhouette of this financial metropolis that never sleeps. Cars flow like rivers, and crowds throng, each person rushing along their own path.

And here he stands, with over ten million in capital, having completed his first crucial battle since his rebirth.