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

2008 6 Month 2 Day.

On this day, there were no news headlines that could explain what was about to happen.

There was no geopolitical conflict in the Middle East, no OPEC production cut announcement, and no weather warnings about an early hurricane season.

However, crude oil prices rose on that day.

The WTI crude oil futures contract opened at $128 the previous day and suddenly experienced a sudden and inexplicable surge during the midday session, as if someone had plucked a string beneath the surface of the market.

The closing price was $134.81.

The daily increase was 5.32%.

The moment the number jumped out in bright red on the Bloomberg terminal, the entire crude oil market simultaneously emitted a kind of indescribable sound—the deep, almost instinctive satisfaction that a hunter feels when he sees his prey fall to the ground, wounded by an arrow.

The trading floor of the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX).

It was 2:40 PM, with 20 minutes left before the market closed.

During this period, the noise level in the lobby reached its peak for the day.

Inside the trading room, brokers, dressed in vests in their respective company colors, crowded into the trading pool, their gestures and shouts erupting simultaneously, like a no-rules fighting match with money as the stakes.

On the big screen, the oil price figures changed every few seconds.

128.40...129.15...131.80...

A burly broker in a red vest was frantically waving paper slips at the edge of the trading pool, his voice hoarse from shouting, but he couldn't stop because three other people behind him were handing him new buy orders.

"Buy! September! Buy!"

Across from me, a real estate agent in a blue vest was practically pleading as he took the order: "Price! What price do you want!"

"Market price! Just the market price!"

At this point, no one was talking about prices anymore.

The person paying the bill had only one thought: no matter how much it costs, get on the bus first.

This is a phenomenon with a specific name in economics: "buying momentum".

It has a more common name: panic buying.

When oil prices rose from $90 to $100, some people thought it was temporary and would fall back.

When oil prices rose from $100 to $115, those who hadn't bought in started to regret it, but were still waiting for a pullback.

When oil prices rose from $115 to $127, waiting for a correction became a luxury; not buying in was the real loss.

And now, it's $134.

Those who hadn't boarded the bus yet didn't even have time to ask why the price had gone up.

All they know is that if they didn't buy yesterday, they'll earn 5% less today.

If you don't buy today, you might earn 5% less tomorrow.

Goldman Sachs said it would reach $200.

Goldman Sachs is right.

The closing bell rang.

A near-cheerful uproar erupted in the trading hall.

Meanwhile, in another direction in Manhattan.

Goldman Sachs headquarters, 43 floors.

On the screen of the fixed-income trading desk, a completely different set of numbers was flashing.

It's not the price of oil, but the spread of credit default swaps (CDS) of Lehman Brothers (LEH).

250 basis points.

It is 100 basis points higher than a month ago.

The meaning of this number, translated into plain language, is roughly this: If you wanted to insure your $100 million Lehman Brothers bonds, you would need to pay $2.5 million in premiums annually today.

A month ago, the number was 150 million.

Who is driving up this number?

It was the hedge funds that quietly left Lehman's prime brokerage accounts, the peers who began to increase the discount rate on Lehman's collateral in the overnight repo market, and the analysts who used increasingly cautious language in their reports about Lehman's liquidity situation.

It's the entire inner circle of Wall Street that's quietly conveying the same signal in their most familiar language:

Lehman Brothers had a lot of problems.

But this signal won't appear in any public news headlines.

It exists only in numbers that only insiders can understand, in encrypted instant messaging between trading desks, and in private lunch conversations among certain fund managers.

In the public eye, Lehman's management team still appeared on CNBC's live broadcast every day, speaking with confidence about the company's capital adequacy ratio and liquidity reserves.

In the world beneath the surface, those veterans who had dealt with Lehman Brothers for years had begun to quietly remove their hands from the railings of the Lehman Brothers ship.

These two events occurred simultaneously in the same city on the same day.

On one hand, oil prices are skyrocketing.

On the other side, Lehman was bleeding.

If you stand at a high enough vantage point and look at these two things together, you will see an utterly absurd scene.

Those who are bullish on oil are using their funds to send a signal to the market: the economy is still alive, demand is still there, the dollar is still depreciating, and inflation is still spreading. Their logic is the continuation of prosperity, even if it's a distorted kind of prosperity.

Those who shorted Lehman Brothers are using their positions to send another signal to the market: credit has broken down, leverage is unsustainable, and the financial system is beginning to rot.

Their logic is that collapse is inevitable, even if that collapse is still hidden beneath the surface.

These two lines of reasoning are contradictory in economics.

Prosperity and collapse cannot coexist.

High oil prices kill demand, killing demand kills prosperity, and killing prosperity kills oil prices.

A financial collapse freezes credit, freezing credit kills investment, and killing investment kills demand for all commodities, including oil.

In theory, these two things lead to the same end: collapse.

The only difference is the route and the time.

But at this moment, everyone in the market is betting on the path they've chosen with an almost insane confidence.

Those who are bullish on oil don't believe the financial system will collapse. They say the Federal Reserve will bail them out, the government will intervene, and the Wall Street giants are "too big to fail," so this is just another Bear Stearns-style turmoil.

Those shorting financial markets don't believe oil prices can continue to rise. They argue that it's a balloon inflated by a liquidity bubble, and that as the financial system's tremors intensify, funds will flee the commodity market, causing oil prices to plummet.

The two groups each stood on the side they believed was right, holding their own flags, waiting for the other's prey to fall first.

There are also clever people who stand between the two paths.

270 Park Avenue, Farstar Capital.

US stocks closed at 4 p.m.

Lin Tao stared at the profit panel, having completely lost the ability to remain expressionless in the face of this number.

He turned to Matt beside him and said in a low but still excited voice:

"A batch of options has already gone in the money. Today's unrealized profit is close to a hundred million! Maybe even several hundred million US dollars!"

Matt didn't look up, continuing to type something on the keyboard:

"I know."

"Don't you feel anything at all?"

"No."

"Really?"

Lin Tao stared at Matt, trying to detect any signs of unease on his face.

"Hundreds of millions of US dollars, in one day."

Lin Tao repeated it, as if to confirm the authenticity of the number.

"If this pace continues, we'll be in July..."

"Lin Tao."

Matt finally looked up at him, his expression extremely calm.

"When you were at Bear Stearns, did you ever see anyone start calculating how much money they could make in six months when a stock hit its daily limit up?"

Lin Tao was taken aback.

"Yes, I have."

"Then what?"

Lin Tao remained silent for two seconds.

"Then he was stuck with it for who knows how many months."

"right."

Matt lowered his head again. "Go look at your betting depth chart."

Lin Tao minimized the profit/loss panel.

But the corners of his mouth couldn't help but curl up slightly.

Isabella sat at her workstation by the window.

She could have had a private office, but she preferred to stay in the lobby. From this spot, she could see Lu Ze's office with just a slight tilt of her head.

She held a crude oil options implied volatility surface chart from the Bloomberg terminal in one hand, and wrote something on a sticky note in the other.

She didn't participate in Lin Tao and Matt's conversation, but she saved the recording of today's trading session and added a note:

"No clear fundamental drivers. Purely liquidity-driven. Be cautious."

Then she sent the file to Lu Ze.

Lu Ze's reply came quickly, containing only one word:

"Um."

Lu Ze sat in the main office, with two windows open on the screen in front of him.

On the left is today's intraday price chart for crude oil.

On the right is the intraday variation curve of Lehman Brothers' CDS spread.

Both of these curves are trending upwards today.

As oil prices rise, the probability of Lehman Brothers defaulting also increases.

If strong demand drives up oil prices, financial institutions' profitability should improve, and their probability of default should decrease.

But now, the fuel driving up oil prices is hot money fleeing the credit market.

The funds withdrawn from Lehman Brothers' prime brokerage accounts and the capital that fled the CDO market converged and poured into the seemingly "safer" pool of commodities, pushing oil prices from the bottom all the way up to $130.

In other words, the crazy oil prices are themselves a symptom of the financial crisis.

It is the same disease, but different symptoms appear in different organs.

Lu Ze tapped his fingers lightly on the table, the rhythm very slow, like an outward manifestation of some kind of inner metronome.

Although he couldn't remember the exact point, in the original history, the price increase in early June was not this steep.

Lu Ze wasn't sure whether this change was good or bad. But the trend was clear—

Oil prices peaked first, then began to collapse.

The collapse of oil prices will take away the last batch of hot money that fled into the commodity market, causing liquidity to dry up again.

A liquidity crunch will deprive investment banks that rely on daily overnight buybacks of their last lifeline.

Then came the collapse of finance.

These two events did not happen at the same time.

There is a window of about two to three months between them.

Lu Ze knew about this window of opportunity, its approximate width, and that he had to complete a precise trade within this window.

Before the oil price frenzy ends, cash out all your long positions.

Then, with those chips, they stand on the other side and await the funeral of finance.

Since Bear Stearns collapsed in March 2008, there have been two unusually stable periods: now and August.

Both moments share a common optimism: the worst is over.

People haven't seen the end of the world for so long that they believe it won't happen.