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

"Now?" Isabella's hand, which had been hovering over the keyboard, froze in mid-air.

On the screen, the intraday chart for crude oil at the end of March was fluctuating wildly.

Bear Stearns had just been liquidated, and the panic of recession was driving the market down with massive sell orders.

But on another screen, the slight drop in the dollar index was equally glaring—the Federal Reserve had just opened the floodgates, and the funds that had fled the subprime quagmire were now desperately seeking any safe haven that could still be called "hard assets."

Recession logic and risk aversion logic.

At the price level, two funds with completely opposite logics are locked in a fierce battle, refusing to give an inch.

While Wall Street was still debating the cause of death around Bear Stearns' body, he had already quietly pulled out a chair at the next table.

"Now."

Lu Ze said, "And we used Goldman Sachs' channels."

Isabella looked up, her brows furrowing instantly.

"You want Goldman Sachs to see this too?"

"right."

"Aren't you afraid they'll speculate based on your position size?"

Lu Ze looked at the screen and smiled.

"I'm afraid they won't guess."

Isabella's fingers hovered above the keyboard.

With Yuanxing having just swindled 700 million from Bear Stearns, all eyes on Wall Street are now on their next account activity, making this not a good time to test the waters.

"The scale of the investment?" she asked, using only four words.

"Phase one, fifty million to one hundred million." Lu Ze tossed a small stack of printed transaction plans onto the table. "Divided into three parts."

Isabella picked up the top page and glanced at it: USO, and a bunch of blue-chip energy stocks like ExxonMobil and Chevron.

"This portion, worth 20 million, will all go through Goldman Sachs' channels."

Lu Ze tapped the table.

"Start construction today. Be bold and decisive, like a traditional fund manager who has just received a large sum of money and is ready to follow the bull market in commodities."

Isabella keenly sensed something was amiss.

Revealing such a standard hand to Goldman Sachs at this critical juncture is definitely not Lu Ze's style. Her fingers quickly flipped to the first page, looking at the list below.

The second page shows the main crude oil futures contracts, which are scattered across several different brokerage firms.

The third page contains a long, densely packed list of crude oil call options with completely staggered strike prices and expiration dates.

Isabella's gaze swept over the combination, instantly piecing together a complete logical loop.

This is not radical. Within the existing macroeconomic fundamentals and quantitative models, this is an absurd judgment that has no basis whatsoever.

She habitually opened Bloomberg and brought up the implied volatility surface of options.

Two minutes later, she closed the window. It was no use; the data offered no answers. Just like that Bear Stearns put option with a strike price of $25, the same deep out-of-the-money position, the same reverse bet, the same… there was no verifiable chain of logic.

If she were at her previous company, and a trader dared to present her with such a baseless order, she would have thrown those pages at their face.

As a professional with top-notch financial training, her instinct should have been to ask for data, build models, and extrapolate probabilities, rather than pay for unfalsifiable guesses.

But at this moment, sitting in the chair, looking at the extremely glaring "130" on the paper, she felt a slight, chilling sense of unease.

This sense of unease did not come from unknown risks, but from herself.

She wondered how she would write a report if she were an analyst whose job was to assess whether this judgment was reasonable.

She thought about it for about ten seconds, then gave up.

The report cannot be written. Not because there is insufficient data, but because the judgment is not derived from the data at all.

She didn't know where it came from.

This made her feel a little uncomfortable, but the discomfort was milder than she had imagined.

She thought, perhaps it was because she had become accustomed to not knowing.

From the night after that gunshot, she knew that the person she was following had certain judgments that she couldn't fathom. She could only see the results and then decide whether to believe them or not.

She chose to believe, since this had already happened once before, and the outcome was correct.

That doesn't prove it will be right next time. She knows that.

She couldn't see his reasoning process, nor did she know from which hidden source those divinely inspired data came. She could simply stand up, knock on the door next door, and demand an explanation that made financial sense. She could have done that.

But she didn't move at all.

Isabella sat up straight again, opened the left drawer, and locked the list of options in the bottom drawer.

Those absurd figures will have to wait a few more days in the dark.

Then she turned back to the screen and placed her hands back on the keyboard. Her movements were so steady and decisive that, accompanied by crisp typing sounds, the 20 million long position was split and submitted with remarkable efficiency.

The logic and data of Wall Street are left in that locked drawer. Now, what guides these hands tapping on the keyboard is something even more blind than common sense.