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

In America, too, some people stay up all night.

It was 11:40 p.m.

Lower Manhattan, the New York Regional Office of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Evan Miller loosened his tie and downed the completely cold cup of black coffee on the table in one gulp.

As the SEC’s sharpest blade in the past two years, Evan has a top-tier Ivy League law school degree and an extremely keen financial sense.

He personally sent four hedge fund managers suspected of insider trading to federal prison.

In his view, there is no perfect crime on Wall Street.

Every transaction leaves a trace of your funds;

As long as you obtain inside information, there will be communication records;

If you collude to manipulate the market, you will leave abnormal order messages on the micro order book.

Just like when people walk through the snow, they will inevitably leave footprints.

But now, as he looked at the file in front of him titled "Review of Farstar Capital's Transactions in February and March," he experienced for the first time an extremely absurd illusion—

He wasn't facing a fund manager, but a ghost.

"Fuck, how the hell did that..."

Evan cursed under his breath, his fingers tapping irritably on the keyboard as he pulled up Lu Ze's complete communication records before and after the Bear Stearns collapse for the fifteenth time.

His highest level of access allowed him to see the call logs of all registered landlines of Farstar Capital, Lu Ze's personal mobile phone, and even Isabella's Blackberry phone.

No.

There was nothing there.

On that crucial night of February 28th—the life-or-death moment when Yuanxing received a $2 million margin call from Goldman Sachs—Lu Ze's communication records were as clean as a blank sheet of paper.

What do normal people do on the night they are about to go bankrupt and face liquidation?

Evan, holding a red pen, frantically drew lines on the whiteboard.

"He'll call lawyers! He'll call relatives and friends to borrow money! He'll call other institutions to try and sell off assets! Even if he wants to turn things around through insider information, he still has to make calls to gather intelligence!"

But Lu Ze did not.

Communication records show that all of Yuanxing Capital's employees ran away that night, leaving only Lu Ze and his COO.

They didn't send out a single email for help, nor did they make a single call to Wall Street.

The only two communications were: one was a call to the downstairs property management to report an air conditioner repair, and the other was Isabella calling the pizza shop across the street to order a Hawaiian double topping.

"A wealthy Chinese-American heir, on the verge of bankruptcy, is eating pizza in his office and, without any external information, suddenly decides to invest his last five million dollars in a Bear Stearns put option expiring in twenty days?"

Evan stared at the whiteboard, feeling as if his criminal investigation logic was being violently rubbed against by some incomprehensible force.

"This isn't insider trading, this is fucking divine revelation!"

Evan didn't believe in superstition.

Since the communication records don't reveal the source of the inside information, then investigate the financial network and look for "coordinated manipulation."

The men in Congress roared on television, saying Bear Stearns died from "malicious short selling" and "institutional collusion."

If Farstar Capital is the leader of this crackdown, it will inevitably seek allies in the market.

Evan retrieved the financial statements of Farstar Capital.

The result only made him more desperate.

At that time, the maximum amount of funds that Farstar Capital could access in its Citibank offshore account was $5,124,782.33, accurate to the cent.

Lu Ze did not use leverage, nor did he collude with other hedge funds to dump shares.

All alone, he pushed his entire fortune of 512 million, leaving not a single penny, to the Goldman Sachs options trading desk.

"Five million. Compared to Bear Stearns, with total assets of four hundred billion, that's not even a hair on the head."

Evan slumped back in his chair.

He tried to explain the deal using Wall Street logic. What would a rational fund manager do if they had absolute insider information?

He will build a position, but he will always leave a sufficient safety margin;

He would buy put options, but he would always choose forward contracts that expire in six months or even a year to prevent the time value loss caused by market fluctuations.

But Lu Ze chose twenty days.

The strike price is $25, making it an extremely deep out-of-the-money option.

In the option pricing models at the time, the odds of this trade winning were less than 0.1%.

This is not an investment at all; it's like betting your entire fortune on a single odd number, "0," in roulette.

"unless……"

Evan's pupils contracted slightly as an extremely crazy idea popped into his mind.

"Unless he wasn't just predicting Bear Stearns' collapse, but he actually 'knew' that Bear Stearns would be dead by March 21st."

But how is that possible?!

At the time, Bear Stearns had $180 billion in liquidity on its books, the Federal Reserve had not yet intervened, and the Wall Street bigwigs were still popping champagne.

Even Bear Stearns' own CEO didn't know that the company would be sold for a mere two dollars two weeks later!

A 26-year-old, with no intelligence network and no financial backing, sat in that half-empty office, eating pizza, and accurately predicted the timing, depth, and reactions of all the major players in this century's collapse.

Evan stared at Lu Ze's expressionless ID photo on the file.

As an elite member of the SEC, he felt an indescribable awe and even a hint of fear towards a subject of investigation for the first time.

It's too clean.

So clean that there was no flaw.

There was no trace of insider trading, no money involved in market manipulation; everything was transparent and in accordance with U.S. securities laws. They laid their cards on the table for Wall Street and then brazenly took seven hundred million.

"No...no..."

Evan sat up abruptly, rubbing his cheeks vigorously with both hands, forcing himself to pull himself out of this "deification" of Lu Ze.

"If the rabbit is not the problem, then the problem must lie with the wolf."

He pushed the files of Farstar Capital aside and picked up another thick document.

That was Goldman Sachs' internal investigation report on serious misconduct by former Vice President Richard Kleiman.

Evan redraws the timeline on the whiteboard.

On February 28, Yuanxing suffered a margin call, and Goldman Sachs issued a margin call.

On the morning of March 1, Richard, accompanied by his legal and risk control team, went to Yuanxing Capital to carry out the compulsory liquidation.

At noon on March 1st, the liquidation did not occur. Instead, Richard used Goldman Sachs' proprietary trading desk to take over Lu Ze's $512 million put option.

"A logical paradox has emerged."

Evan's eyes were fixed on the time point on the whiteboard.

"Richard is a greedy wolf. He holds the Margin Call, and he can crush Farstar at any time and devour their assets."

"So, what exactly happened in that conference room on the morning of March 1st?"

Why would a wolf that had its jaws on its prey's neck suddenly let go? Not only did it let go, but it also willingly offered its own neck, essentially signing a completely unequal betting agreement?

Evan gasped.

The answer is obvious.

In that conference room without surveillance or recording, Farstar Capital must have pulled out something that terrified Richard and even the entire Goldman Sachs, and pulled off a textbook example of reverse blackmail!

Only in this way can we explain that bizarre options contract! Only in this way can we explain why Goldman Sachs was willing to swallow a loss of 700 million dollars itself, and even more so, to send Richard to prison!

Goldman Sachs isn't cleaning house; Goldman Sachs is silencing witnesses!

They are using Richard as a sacrificial offering to cover up that fatal weakness that Farstar Capital has seized upon, a weakness that absolutely cannot be exposed!

"Someone has already cleaned up the scene."

Evan gazed at the deep night sky outside the window and murmured to himself:

"And the one cleaning up the mess wasn't the ghost that made 700 million, but Goldman Sachs that lost 700 million."

He lowered his head, his gaze falling on the list of people accompanying Richard when he went to Far Star to "force the emperor to abdicate".

Richard went inside. The legal officer wouldn't speak. The assistant knew nothing.

Only one person remained.