A $50 million margin call? I'll short Wall Street.

(Friendly reminder: This book does not constitute investment advice. If the reader were to travel through time or be reborn, the general directions and events described in the book can be used as a reference, but specific operations are not recommended or difficult to replicate.)

(Investing involves risk; leverage requires caution.)

......

The rain in Manhattan always carries a musty, fishy smell of banknotes.

2008年2月28日，深夜11点17分。

The penthouse of a luxury apartment on Fifth Avenue in the Upper East Side was eerily silent.

The living room lights were off, and outside the huge floor-to-ceiling windows, the neon lights of the Empire State Building were fragmented into bizarre and grotesque shapes by the continuous downpour.

The pale light barely illuminated a corner of the living room, which was covered with a Persian rug, casting cold, distorted shadows on the expensive walnut wood floor.

"Cough...cough..."

Amidst the extremely strong smell of gunpowder and the pungent stench of blood, Lu Ze suddenly opened his eyes.

The intense tinnitus felt like ten thousand servers were simultaneously overloaded and screaming in his brain, and the churning spasms in his stomach made him instinctively curl up.

My mouth was filled with a rusty bitterness, and my tongue touched the bursting blood blisters in my gums.

But he didn't shout it out.

Within a fraction of a second of opening his eyes, his right hand gripped the cold metal object that had fallen to his side, still warm from his body, like an iron clamp.

A Colt M1873 large-caliber revolver.

The gun is engraved with exquisite chrome patterns, the grip is made of custom-made black walnut wood, and the muzzle is still emitting a slight wisp of smoke.

These are relics left by his father.

"Click."

The safety was expertly pushed off with his thumb, and the muzzle instantly locked onto the doorway in the darkness. The muscles in his arm tensed, his index finger rested on the trigger guard, and his breathing was reduced to almost inaudible.

three seconds.

Five seconds.

ten seconds.

There were no attackers, no enemies breaking down the door. The only sounds in the room, besides his suppressed breathing, were the muffled thuds of raindrops pounding against the triple-layered bulletproof glass outside the window, like someone pounding a coffin lid with drumsticks.

Lu Ze was slightly out of breath, his tense muscles gradually relaxing. His arm holding the gun remained as steady as a rock, but cold sweat had already seeped from his forehead.

Only then did he feel a tearing pain in his right temple, as if someone was scraping his skull back and forth with a red-hot steel needle.

He raised his left hand and touched it; what he felt was a warm, viscous, semi-solid liquid.

Blood. It was still slowly seeping out.

He stared at the blood on his fingertip for two seconds, his movements completely calm—as if he were confirming a number, rather than facing his own wound.

The instant he propped himself up, two completely different memories collided, clashed, and finally merged in his mind like a flood bursting its banks.

The first memory belongs to him—in 2024, the youngest Chinese hedge fund king on Wall Street. He manages an international hedge fund with a scale of over 30 billion US dollars and is revered in the industry as a "financial machine without a heart".

On the eve of a global short-selling battle involving hundreds of billions of dollars, he worked continuously for 72 hours, eventually suffering a heart attack and dying in front of the six-screen trading terminal that was lit up all night.

The second memory belongs to the original owner of this body.

Coincidentally, he is also named Lu Ze, with the English name Lance Walker. He is a wealthy second-generation Chinese-American whose father was a first-generation immigrant entrepreneur and whose mother was a socialite in Boston.

The couple died in a plane crash, leaving behind a substantial estate and a micro-investment firm called "Farstar Capital".

In order to prove himself to the self-important white elites on Wall Street, this young Chinese American plunged headlong into the cutthroat world of Manhattan's financial system.

Just three days ago, he was made a deal with Richard Kleiman, the vice president of Goldman Sachs, an elite white man who always patted him on the shoulder and called him "good brother" at high-end parties.

Richard exploited the information gap and Lu Ze's trust in him to dump a large number of CDOs (collateralized debt obligations) packaged from high-risk subprime mortgages onto Farstar Capital.

The underlying assets of these assets are all junk mortgages with large amounts of overdue payments, which are about to be foreclosed and auctioned off.

Not only that, Richard also recommended off-court leverage of up to fifty times to him.

"Lance, believe me, the American housing market will always rise. This is God's financial holy grail for Americans. After this deal, you'll be the new king of Wall Street, and even Goldman Sachs' executive committee will look at you with new respect."

In my memory, Richard was wearing a bespoke three-piece suit, holding an ice-cold martini, his blue eyes brimming with genuine smiles. That sincerity, precise and professional, was flawless—and that was precisely its most fatal flaw.

So, the original owner signed the betting agreement.

The contract was 173 pages long, filled with obscure financial jargon and legal clauses.

He didn't even finish reading it; he only signed his name on the last page after Richard's gentle urging.

However, less than 48 hours later, the default rate in the US subprime mortgage market suddenly plummeted. The valuation of these CDOs instantly crashed, like a punctured balloon evaporating at a visible speed.

Accompanying the crash was Wall Street's coldest, most ruthless, and most despairing reality—

Margin Call (Additional Margin Notice)

Tomorrow—no, to be precise, at 10:00 AM tomorrow—Goldman Sachs’ risk control department will force Yuanxing Capital to pay a margin of $50 million to cover the huge hole caused by the 50x leverage collapse.

If the money cannot be paid, Farstar Capital will go bankrupt instantly, and all the assets left by the original owner's parents—including the trust fund, the penthouse apartment on the Upper East Side, the two Ferraris parked in the underground garage, and the art collection purchased at Sotheby's—will be completely liquidated, and not a single penny will be recovered.

Even more fatally, because of the trap clauses Richard had planted in the contract, once the account was liquidated, the original owner would not only be burdened with debts that he could never repay for the rest of his life, but would also face high-level charges from the FBI regarding "malicious financial fraud."

He will face at least twenty years in a federal prison for serious crimes.

Despair, fear, and anger at being betrayed completely shattered the young man's psychological defenses.

Just half an hour ago, the original owner drank most of a bottle of Wild Turkey Bourbon whiskey. The alcohol burned his throat, but it couldn't extinguish the fear in his heart.

He stumbled and took his father's heirloom from the safe—an M1873—and, trembling, pulled back the bolt, pressing the cold muzzle against his temple.

He closed his eyes, and the words of his father's earnest advice flashed through his mind: "Lance, in Wall Street, never trust anyone's smile."

Then he pulled the trigger.

His hands were shaking.

From signing that contract to raising the gun, everything this young man did was substandard—including ending his own life. The bullet grazed the outside of his skull, carving a deep, bone-revealing groove in his temporal bone, and finally embedding itself deep in the plaster ceiling above his head, leaving a charred bullet hole.

The immense recoil and the concussion caused by the abrasions caused the original owner to faint on the spot, and blood gushed out, soaking through the collar of his shirt.

When he opened his eyes again, he was Lu Ze from 2024.

Having sorted out all the causes and consequences, the last trace of confusion that Lu Ze had felt upon waking up disappeared from his eyes.

There was no anger, no relief at surviving. He didn't even spare much attention to judging Richard, who had pushed him into the abyss—that was a matter for later, a variable to be calculated, not hated.

At this moment, his mind was occupied by a near-physiological, unstoppable program: what is the current net worth of this body, how much debt does it have, when is the liquidation time, and—in this dead end, is there a crack that can be pried open?

As for the original owner, only one extremely cold judgment flashed through his mind.

Someone who can't even finish reading a contract shouldn't be sitting at this card table.

He grabbed a few thick tissues printed with the logos of Italian wineries and pressed them against the still-bleeding wound on his temple.

The tissues were quickly soaked through. He tossed them into the trash can expressionlessly, then pulled out a few more.

With his other hand, he picked up the bottle of Wild Turkey Bourbon whiskey on the table, which was still a third full, tilted his head back, and took a big gulp.

The strong liquor cut down my throat and into my stomach like a knife.

He didn't want the taste of the liquor; he wanted the burning sensation and stimulation it provided. He needed it to suppress the dizziness from the concussion and keep his mind absolutely clear before dawn.

This body is his only asset right now, and he intends to squeeze every last drop of value out of it in the next few hours.

He threw the blood-stained tissue into the sink and walked toward the Bloomberg terminal that was always lit up in front of the French windows.

Blood was still dripping from his temples, running down his jawline and onto the dark carpet, drop by drop. He ignored it.

This is a professional financial terminal worth $24,000 a year, with a dark blue indicator light flashing on the black main unit.

Six 27-inch LCD screens are arranged in an arc around the perimeter, displaying real-time data on global stock markets, bond markets, foreign exchange markets, and commodity futures.

Even in the dead of night, this machine never sleeps, like a tireless financial behemoth.

Long, slender fingers typed a few commands on a specially designed Bloomberg keyboard.

"Pat-pat, pat-pat, pat."

The crisp sound of the buttons was exceptionally clear in the deathly silent living room.

The screen refreshed, and a pale blue light illuminated his pale face, which was covered in blood and sweat.

时间面板上，莹绿色的数字清晰地跳动着：2008年2月28日，23:21:37。

He glanced at the stock codes still flashing on the screen and exhaled.

A truly wonderful moment.