On a winter morning, the cold wind was biting, but it still couldn't stop Ding Le's enthusiasm for running in the morning. Especially after Xia Xiao left, running became his best choice.

Through the Wall Street information that Xia Xiao sent him every day, he found the first predatory target of the Black Panther Fund - Bear Stearns.

Bear Stearns, once known as "a bear that never hibernates", is the fifth largest investment bank and the second largest bond underwriter in the United States, founded in 1923, and has a history of 84 years, after the Great Depression and multiple economic crises in the United States in the 30s of the 20th century.

From January 2001 to June 2003, the Fed lowered its benchmark federal interest rate 13 times. In two and a half years, the federal benchmark interest rate was lowered from 6.5% to 1%, a record low in interest rates, which directly contributed to the beginning of the boom in the U.S. housing market.

As the U.S. real estate market began to boom, financial institutions relaxed lending restrictions for low- and middle-income earners, but the repayment of these lenders was not stable, exposing their lenders to greater risks. Moreover, the long maturities of residential mortgages have exacerbated liquidity problems for lenders.

In order to solve the risk and liquidity problems of lending institutions, support lending institutions to expand their scale, and realize the aspiration of "home ownership", the United States has set up a number of specialized institutions with government backgrounds to engage in the business of buying and selling housing mortgage loans and securitization, thus promoting the further development of the primary loan market.

By 2007, the U.S. residential mortgage stock reached $10.9 trillion, about half of which was securitized into MBS (mortgage-backed bonds). In the securities investment of banks, MBS has become the most important investment object of commercial banks.

Bear Stearns started in the 90s and by 2003 it had become one of the company's main businesses, with the establishment of two hedge funds specializing in trading CDS (Credit Default Swaps) – HGF (Advanced Credit Strategy Fund) and HGELF (Senior Credit Leveraged Fund) – and for a time became the leader in the field of financial derivatives for mortgage bonds in the United States.

Bear Stearns showed that HGF has an expected rate of return of more than 10%, which is higher than the bank interest rate and less risky, so it has attracted a large number of customers to invest. But in fact, HGF and HGELF, which invest in CDS, are facing great risks, and they can obtain higher returns with the help of leverage tools in the situation of rising real estate markets, but once the market deflects, these two types of funds will inevitably suffer heavy setbacks.

In February, the real estate bubble burst as the risks caused by subprime loans surfaced and gradually escalated into a subprime mortgage crisis.

In March, Bear Stearns also set up a joint investment fund in Beijing with Huang Guangyu of Gome Electric, intending to invest in Chinese retail companies.

In June, Bear Stearns released its quarterly report, saying that the company's quarterly earnings fell 10% from a year earlier due to the weakness of the mortgage market. Bear Stearns' holdings of large amounts of toxic assets, including collateralized debt, have led to a decline in investor confidence.

In August, Bear Stearns announced the collapse of two of its funds that invested in subprime mortgage securitization products, with investors collectively losing more than $1.5 billion. Warren Spector announced his resignation and Alan Schwartz became the company's sole president.

In September, Bear Stearns announced a 68% drop in quarterly earnings. Between the end of May and the end of August, the company's book assets shrank by $42 billion.

In November, Bear Stearns was again confronted when the Wall Street Journal announced that Bear Stearns CEO James Kane was obsessed with bridge and indifferent to the company's operations, which immediately caused a backlash among investors.

Ding Le thought while running, although Bear Stearns has a glorious past, but this time it is destined to be doomed, Wall Street's famous short sellers have long been eyeing this piece of fat, although Bear Stearns' current stock price has fallen 40% from the highest price of $156.40 / share in May, but in the next three months, its stock price will fall to $3 / share, now is the right time to enter the market.

Back home, Ding Le hurriedly contacted Ding Jianye, Ding Jianye was naturally very excited when he received Ding Le's call, all the procedures of the Black Panther Fund have been completed, and he also recruited a local trader through headhunting, everything is ready, only the east wind is owed, and now he finally waited for the signal to do it, he was naturally excited.

Because of the time difference with the United States, it is not yet the time to start trading, and after Ding Le explained the transaction to Ding Jianye on the phone, he took a shower and changed his clothes and went to work.

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As a newly established institution in the fourth quarter, the head office of the company and retail marketing department does not have any performance appraisal indicators. At present, they have reported two credit businesses, and both of them have been approved by the head office at one time, which has far exceeded the expectations of the head office leaders.

For the rest of the year, the whole team still can't relax, and at this stage, the main focus is on next year's customer reserves.

Ding Le considers that the head office will definitely have a quantitative assessment index for the whole year next year, so now reserve a few projects, and strive to report to the head office for approval before the end of the year, so that after the New Year's Day, the loan can be quickly released, so as to lay a good foundation for the first quarter of the Spring Festival.

At the regular morning meeting, Ding Le shared his work ideas before New Year's Day with all the students, and everyone was very supportive of Ding Le's idea of grasping the current project reserves and striving for a good start in the coming year.

At present, the project of Hengrun Company, which Gu Binbin and Dai Yanqing are responsible for in the team, is going through the mortgage registration procedures; the project loan of Haikang Company, which is followed up by Chang Dong and Liu Jia, is also going through the mortgage procedures for the project under construction; Chen Tongxi and Zhang Zidong have a household in their hands following up; Fei Yang and Xu Lixin have also stepped out of the shadow of the bill case and have re-found customers with cooperation intentions to follow up.

For customers who have the intention of cooperation, Ding Le asks everyone to be more proactive, not only to meet the company's financial contact, but also to find the company's boss for a face-to-face interview.

At the morning meeting, Chen Tongxi and Zhang Zidong pointed out that they had encountered some problems in the negotiation process with their target customers.

They are marketing a car sales company, which currently has a loan cooperation with CCB, and now wants to cooperate with Haizhou Bank, and the two of them have not been in contact with this type of customer before, and they are a little unsure about the customer's cooperation intention and the authenticity of the business.

According to the information collected by Chen Tongxi and Zhang Zidong in the early stage, Huafa Company's main business scope is the sales and maintenance of automobiles and auto parts, and it is a five-star seller of Shaanxi Automobile Group, with a total of 545 heavy-duty vehicles sold last year, with an invoice sales amount of 120 million yuan. In the first 11 months of this year, 612 heavy-duty vehicles have been sold, and the invoice sales amount has reached 150 million yuan. Huafa Company currently has a market share of up to 90% in Haizhou, which is the largest seller of Shaanxi Automobile in the Yangtze River Delta region, and was also awarded the title of "Shaanxi Automobile's Top Ten 4S Stores" by Shaanxi Automobile Group last year.

With the vigorous development of China's logistics industry, the sales performance of Huafa Company has increased year by year, and the future development prospects are good.

In order to facilitate this business, Ding Le decided to go to the door with Chen and Zhang to negotiate again and help them go to the field to understand the situation of the target customers.