Reborn in 2012, building a new energy empire

Jiang Haoran left the Jiaotong University campus at around 3 p.m.

In late May, the air in Shanghai was already humid and hot, and the shadows of the plane trees were stretched long and slanted.

He walked east along Huaihai West Road, replaying his encounter with Lin Miaomiao in his mind.

Everything went according to plan, even more smoothly than expected.

She accepted the analysis summary, left her contact information, and, more importantly—she accepted the bottle of Oriental Leaf tea.

His memories from his past life told him that Lin Miaomiao always had an inexplicable trust in those who could understand her.

This is a subtle weakness in human nature, but also a shortcut to building connections.

My phone vibrated; it was a reply from my uncle, Chen Jingge: "I'm on Hongqiao Road. I'll send you the address. Just come upstairs when you get there; it's 1802."

Jiang Haoran glanced at the address—a famous office building on Hongqiao Road.

He hailed a taxi and gave them his address.

The car merged into the traffic, and the street scene outside the window rushed past, the glass curtain walls of the tall buildings reflecting the dazzling sunlight.

At this time in his previous life, Jiang Haoran was just a student drifting through university, knowing very little about his uncle Chen Jingge's actual situation.

As far as I can remember, my uncle Chen Jingge had not yet quit his job to start his own business at this time. He had a formal job and also used his spare time to trade stocks and futures.

Around 2016, he suddenly had more money in his pocket and began to buy properties in several cities in the Yangtze River Delta.

When her mother occasionally mentioned it, her tone was always filled with emotion: "Your uncle was lucky with his investments and made money, but he didn't forget to help out his family."

It wasn't until Jiang Haoran entered the capital circle that he vaguely heard that his uncle had made his fortune in stocks and futures in his early years, but he never investigated the specific details.

In this life, if one wants to quickly accumulate start-up capital, one's uncle's experience and channels in the investment market are undoubtedly a path worth leveraging.

Moreover, he has always remembered the help his uncle had given to the family in his previous life.

The elevator ascended smoothly. As the doors opened, Jiang Haoran composed himself and pressed the doorbell for apartment 1802.

The door opened quickly. Chen Jingge was wearing an ordinary polo shirt, his phone pressed to his ear, seemingly on a call.

He nodded to Jiang Haoran, gesturing for him to come in, then turned back to continue giving a few brief instructions over the phone.

This is a simply decorated office, not very large, about 60 or 70 square meters.

The bookshelves against the wall hold professional books such as "Security Analysis" and "Technical Analysis of the Futures Markets," as well as more macro-level readings like "The Wealth of Nations" and "Currency Wars."

The most eye-catching feature is the three screens hanging on the table—two displaying stock quotes and one showing the futures market trend.

Jiang Haoran's gaze lingered on the futures screen for a moment.

The constantly fluctuating price curve stirred up fragments of memory deep within my mind, and a clear commodity name gradually emerged: soybean meal 1301 contract.

At this moment, its price is fluctuating narrowly around the key level of 3000 yuan/ton, and the trend chart is so smooth that it is almost stagnant, like the suffocating calm before a storm.

He remembers clearly that in the summer of 2012, a capital storm that would later be etched into the memory of the entire Chinese futures market and known as the "930 Incident" was brewing fiercely beneath the calm surface.

Its core driver is simple, brutal, yet unstoppable: the specter of La Niña is wandering the globe, causing South America to experience a drought unseen in 40 years, while North America is facing a drought of unprecedented severity in a century.

The North American continent, especially the vast soybean farms in the American Midwest, became the hardest hit areas.

Once the weather-driven market takes off, its power is enough to overwhelm all technical analysis and human resistance.

US soybean prices have been rising steadily since the beginning of the year, and the magnitude and duration of this rise are about to reach their highest level in nearly a decade.

As a commodity whose price is more than 90% correlated with that of US soybeans, domestic soybean meal prices have already been fluctuating in tandem.

By the end of May, the price had quietly risen from a low of 2738 yuan at the end of last year to around 3150 yuan, an increase of nearly 15%.

But in Jiang Haoran's memory, this was merely an appetizer in this bloody feast.

The real, fierce battle will erupt in June and July.

The increasingly pessimistic soybean production forecasts from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will become a series of sparks that ignite the tinderbox.

The bulls' weapon is the logic of production cuts confirmed by natural disasters, while the bears' basis is wishful thinking that "prices are already high" and illusions about policy intervention.

This match was destined to be asymmetrical from the very beginning.

Images from memory, accompanied by cold, hard numbers, surge forth:

On July 11, the soybean meal 1301 contract opened at the daily limit, with a huge amount of short-selling funds entering the market to fight, and the daily turnover soared to 277 billion yuan. However, the price fell back at the close, leaving countless short sellers with the fatal illusion that "the market is about to peak".

On July 16, the notoriously aggressive speculative capital from the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions unleashed a powerful attack, locking the stock at its daily limit again at the open, with a record daily turnover of 430 billion yuan.

On this day, countless short accounts with insufficient margin were forcibly liquidated for the first time.

On August 1st, the price broke through the 4000 yuan mark.

Jiang Haoran snapped out of his reverie, his gaze refocusing on the price of just over 3000 yuan on the screen. His mind raced: what if, at this very moment, he started placing long orders at around 3000 yuan…

Assuming an initial position of 30%, as the market trend is confirmed, an additional 30% is added each time the price breaks through 3100 and 3200, bringing the total position to 90%, with an average cost of around 3100 yuan/ton.

So, when the price reaches its peak of 4369 yuan/ton.

Gross profit per ton = 4369 - 3100 = 1269 yuan.

以豆粕合约每手10吨、保证金比例约10%（槓桿10倍）计算，但考虑到仓位管理和风险控制，实际资金使用效率（複合槓桿）大约在4-7倍之间。

A simple estimate suggests that the total return on investment from this market rally will be between 400% and 700%.

In other words, an investment of 5 can turn into 20 to 45 in less than three months.

This is not just a numbers game on paper, but a highly certain trend that has been verified by countless people with real money.

At this moment, this trend has just begun to emerge, and the most lucrative and risk-rewarding segment is laid bare before his eyes.

The screen flashing soybean meal prices was no longer just a tool for displaying prices in Jiang Haoran's eyes, but rather like the door to a quietly opened vault.

Inside the gate lies a brief but dazzling golden road paved by abnormal climate, supply and demand mismatch, and human madness.

He knew that what he needed to do next was to figure out how to use the most natural and persuasive method to keep his uncle Chen Jingge's attention firmly focused on this path.

He must use irrefutable data chains and rigorous deductive logic to package his past life's "memories" into astonishing "insights" in this life.

This wave of market activity was one of the few golden opportunities he could recall at that time, with a clear trajectory, that allowed initial capital to achieve exponential growth.