Throughout March, HD has been busy with one thing, and that is the Xin'an Commodity Exchange. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

The house is the easiest thing, it is located directly in the Tin Hau Temple, which was originally a temple market, and merchants are used to trading here, not to mention that the exchange was first built, and it does not need much area.

The main thing is to develop various norms, as well as to train the corresponding employees.

The specification is based on the system of some Western exchanges, such as the exchange system in Amsterdam and the exchange system in London, which mainly deals in bulk commodities and is carried out by way of listing and auctioning.

There is also to publicize the exchange, requiring major businessmen to enter the exchange to trade, etc., originally Hurd did not take this seriously, in his understanding, after the exchange is completed, there must be a large number of businessmen to come to trade, but this is China, he still does not know much.

He invited a lot of merchants, the focus was on those who almost monopolized the tea trade, but on the contrary, these people were the least enthusiastic, very simply, they were in a dominant position, and no one wanted to change when they were in their own glory.

On the contrary, those retail businessmen are more enthusiastic, whether it is Chinese or foreign, for them, they need a fair trading channel, Chinese small businessmen are worried about not finding good buyers, foreign retail businessmen are worried about not having a stable supply of goods, so they are the group that needs the platform of the exchange the most, as for those merchants and ocean banks, they themselves are a platform, so there is not much demand for the exchange.

Hurd printed the rules and regulations of the exchange into a beautiful picture book, which was not only distributed to the merchants who traded in Xin'an, but also distributed in Hong Kong and Macao, and advertised in newspapers.

Everything is ready, on April 2, a good day and an auspicious day, in the sound of firecrackers, the Xin'an Exchange opened.

Zhu Jinglun was present in person, and those big businessmen and ocean banks also sold face, and they came to say goodbye, but their enthusiasm was not high, that is, to see.

There are no resources in the hands of retail merchants, and on the first day, everyone is still unfamiliar with the rules, just tentative orders, so the trading volume is very limited, only 500 catties of tea in a day, three quintals of crows and ten bags of cotton and four quintals of raw silk are traded, and the transaction amount is less than 1,000 taels.

Hurd thought that this was just the beginning, and where there was commodity trading, it was impossible for the exchange to be without business.

But he still underestimated China's special national conditions, and in a short period of time, Chinese businessmen played unspoken rules.

They are reluctant to trade on the exchange because the exchange takes a thousandth of the transaction fee on each transaction, and the small businessman is not going to pay the money at all. But they are not merchants, they are not ocean companies, they have no pricing power, so they use some special means, the exchange price as a reference, directly with the foreign businessmen outside the exchange, the result is that the exchange opened, the trading volume did not go up, but the over-the-counter trading became frequent. The exchange is equivalent to providing a reference specification for businessmen, expanding the existing temple market transactions.

For this situation, Hurd really has no choice, after all, he is only a diplomat, he is familiar with customs operations, and he also has unique insights into administrative management, this kind of businessman's means, he really doesn't know much.

But the exchange is still improving, Hurd has a good habit, good at listening to other people's advice, he heard from some foreign businessmen, the integrity of Chinese small businessmen is very worried, shoddy things happen from time to time, Hurd feels that this matter can be done by the exchange.

So he hired some experienced tea shop veterans, and began to grade the tea, which was divided into upper, middle and lower grades, and the exchange inspected the goods and charged a certain inspection fee.

The service was well received by businessmen, both Chinese and foreign, who preferred to operate under transparent rules, and shoddy businessmen were nothing more than speculators who made quick money, and could not be considered mainstream.

Because both sides need the services of the exchange, the trading volume of the exchange has rebounded for a while, but it soon began to decline, and the small merchants really did not have the professional ability of this level, but when they established a relatively strong relationship of mutual trust with some businessmen, they began to opportunistic again.

For example, they do not take all their goods to the exchange, but only take out some samples to firm, so as to save appraisal fees, and then take the samples to determine the price with their customers, and still conduct over-the-counter transactions.

Zhu Jinglun noticed this incident, and he suggested that Hurd simply forget it for free for the time being, and after cultivating the trading habits of the market and merchants, he would decide whether to charge fees and the standard of fees. Zhu Jinglun's thinking is somewhat of the concept of later start-ups exchanging subsidies for market share.

But Hurd was stubbornly opposed, insisting on a fee, arguing that the exchange was a place to provide fair trading and professional services, and that if traders could not accept the fees, it would mean that the exchange's services were of no value at all and should not be opened.

Zhu Jinglun was too lazy to fight with him, anyway, in Zhu Jinglun's view, even if it is an over-the-counter transaction, it is still a transaction, and the export still has to be decimated, and the value at the time of the centritorial is not their transaction value, but the appraisal (appraiser) of the centripy bureau, and the price reference is also the average price of the exchange for a period of time.

Hurd, on the other hand, has been focusing on the exchange lately, and he is determined to do a good job of it.

At the beginning of May, he adopted a standardized contract system, and had previously built ten large warehouses near the docks, requiring merchants trading on the exchange to send goods directly to the warehouse, which would pack and sort, calculate, and then issue them a standard manifest of the corresponding grade. Then the buyer takes these bills to the exchange for trading, and after the buyer bids for the bills, he takes the bills and goes directly to the warehouse to pick up the goods.

This method is more complicated, but the advantage is that the direct connection between the buyer and the seller is interrupted, the seller takes the standardized manifest to pick up the goods, and does not know who supplied his goods, and the buyer also directly delivers the goods to the exchange warehouse, and in the end does not necessarily know who picked up their goods.

As a result, the purchase and sale becomes a contract between standard bills. The exchange became the sole intermediary between buyers and sellers.

As for whether buyers and sellers will accept this form, Hurd is very confident, he believes that the exchange provides high-quality services, first of all, to standardize the grading and subcontracting of goods, and the seller and buyer get in their hands are standard weight, standard quality commodity certificates.

The most important thing is that the buyer can sell directly at one time, no matter how much the goods are, for some businessmen, put into the exchange warehouse, it is equivalent to a shot, because they get the bill of goods, they can choose to trade immediately, or they can wait and see, there is no need to worry about the loss of the goods in the warehouse, which is equivalent to providing buyers with free warehousing services, so that they will not have to rent the warehouse themselves as in the past, and bear additional costs.

For the exchange, although there are goods in and out every day, but the volume of goods in the warehouse fluctuates, the storage cost does not change much, unless a large number of merchants do not ship at the same time, otherwise the goods in the warehouse can basically remain flat, then the storage cost will not be too large.

At the same time, HD also waived the additional appraisal fee, making merchants more willing to authenticate all the goods, and attracting them to deposit all the goods in the exchange warehouse in exchange for a manifest.

Hurd believes that since traders trade on the exchange, first, the additional risk of over-the-counter trading is eliminated, second, the speed of entry and exit of goods on the exchange is more efficient, and third, the storage cost is eliminated, and he believes that both buyers and sellers now have lower costs to trade on the exchange than before, and there is no reason not to trade on the exchange.

In May, the trading volume of the Xin'an Exchange increased by 10 percentage points compared with April, and Hurd was able to report or play tricks with Zhu Jinglun, but at this time, Zhu Jinglun did not have time to care about Hurd's efforts and achievements for the time being, because the British treaty exchange envoy arrived in Hong Kong.