In Taoqiu Dongcheng District, outside the street of Piaoxiangju, Gao Yang walked into this restaurant with a intoxicated face. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info

Of course, he knew that this restaurant had been bleeding a year ago. That was when the Taoqiu rangers were at their most rampant, and the rangers were lured here by the newly arrived Taoqiu Jun, and then they were all wiped out.

Although it was already night at this time, at this time, the fragrance house was brightly lit and full of people, so it was lively!

A year ago, when the most popular restaurant in Taoqiu had a first-class bloody incident, everyone felt that this restaurant was unlucky, and no one came here to drink anymore. However, in just one month, the restaurant has become popular again. Even later, the higher the requirements for admission to this restaurant! Today, without a membership card similar to that of later generations, ordinary people can't enter this restaurant!

And the reason for this change still comes down to the Taoqiu Junzi Yan who was recently sealed here.

This Taoqiu Jun sealed Taoqiu for only a month, and he quickly swept away the ranger forces of the entire Taoqiu, and then he rectified the order of the entire Taoqiu at an extremely fast speed. The original dirty, messy, and famous city has become a clean, tidy, and civilized new city. Admired by all the Taochu people!

And to achieve such a goal, it obviously takes a lot of energy for Tao Qiujun. Throughout Taoqiu, you can see the mounted police running to maintain law and order, the traffic police holding short sticks maintaining traffic, and the sailors rowing small sampans directing the entry and exit of boats.

In the eyes of well-informed merchants, if the Yi government wanted to maintain its original finances and could not wantonly plunder the property of the common people, the only thing Tao Qiujun could do was to raise taxes. For the merchants, it was not unacceptable for the city to have such a clean and tidy scene, and the pottery mound became orderly in their hands, and the tax was slightly raised.

Therefore, when everyone visited Tao Qiujun, they tested him slightly. Some big businessmen even said that since Tao Qiujun "voted for me with papaya", we will also "repay him with Qiong Yao", which is really good for everyone.

However, as if he did not understand everyone's meaning, Tao Qiu Jun once again affirmed to the merchants his determination to protect private property, and Taoqiu is an open commercial city, and the commercial tax of the entire city will not change for the time being.

The lord said so, and the merchants had no choice but to give up. At the same time, everyone is also curious: how will this lord maintain a balance between the financial income and expenditure of the Yi Prefecture?

Soon, you won't have to guess. Just across the street from this Piaoxiang House, an extremely new institution was opened: the Taoqiu Grain Exchange.

At first, everyone didn't know what this exchange was for, and they didn't pay much attention to it, but soon after, the entire Taoqiu began to go crazy for the establishment of this new institution, and everyone watched every move of the exchange carefully! And Piaoxiangju, which is close to this grain exchange, has become popular again.

Taoqiu is located at the center of the intersection of water transportation in the world, and trade is developed, and the largest amount of trade is grain. Most of the merchants who traded in Taoqiu did not dare to say that at least the four CDs were engaged in the grain trade.

Dai Yan did not specifically count the total amount of grain transactions in Taoqiu in this era, but he knew that he would never let go of such a huge benefit as grain trading! And after he promised to protect his private property, there seemed to be no other way to plunder the wealth of Taoqiu?

If you think so, then you would underestimate Dai Yan, a traverser!

In the eyes of Dai Yan, a traverser, there are many ways to plunder wealth. Didn't the famous philosopher Ma call this way of plundering wealth exploitation, for today's era with feudal aristocrats as the main body, their exploitation methods are too outdated in Dai Yan's opinion!

Let me teach you the corrupt aristocracy how to exploit it, and then get a good look at the exploitation methods of capitalism!

So he established this Taoqiu Grain Exchange. For this exchange, if another traverser arrives, then he must be very surprised: I grass, isn't this futures! How come this era is also there?

For the Taoqiu merchants, they all had their own reasons for engaging in the grain trade. If they could choose another business, they would say: I will never trade grain again!

All this, of course, because the risks of the grain trade are too great!

In this day and age, the impact on food prices is just too great! Now is the Warring States era, and there is no war in the world. Once there is a war between the nations, the consumption of grain and grass will inevitably surge, and the price of food can easily break through the sky. In addition, in this era, the productive forces are not developed, droughts, floods, and insect plagues are all the time, and the price of food in various places is also changing all the time.

As the commercial center of the world, Taoqiu is the largest part of it, and the price of grain is very susceptible to the influence of the Quartet. Whether it is a merchant who wants to sell grain in Taoqiu, or a merchant who buys grain in Taoqiu, they are faced with a question every day: will the price of food go up or down tomorrow?

As a traverser, Dai Yan easily saw through the uneasiness in the hearts of the merchants. In his view, the essence of business is actually to take risks and provide services, and the expected income generated under the risk is the profit of the merchants. As long as you are able to reduce risk for others, making money is fairly easy.

And futures are such a good thing to reduce risk. Futures are essentially just a trading contract, and its most important function is that it can be hedged to reduce risk.

Hedging refers to the trading activities of using the futures market as a place to transfer price risk, using futures contracts as a temporary substitute for buying and selling commodities in the spot market in the future, buying commodities now and preparing to sell them later, or insuring the prices of commodities that need to be purchased in the future. The basic practice of hedging is to carry out the same type of commodity in the spot market and the futures market at the same time to buy and sell the same type of commodity but in the opposite direction, that is, at the same time as buying or selling physical goods, selling or buying the same amount of futures in the futures market, after a period of time, when the price change makes the profit and loss in spot trading, the loss in futures trading can be offset or compensated. This creates a hedging mechanism between "current" and "future", between the near term and the forward, so that price risk is minimized.

For example, if the current price of grain is 100 stone and 30 gold, a merchant predicts that he will need to buy 10,000 stone of grain in three months.

If the price of food rises in the future, then he will definitely lose; If food prices fall in the future, it will certainly be in his favor.

Then he can buy a grain contract that will be delivered in three months, with a futures price of 32 gold in 100 stones, and sell the futures contract after three months.

Three months later, if the price of grain rises to 40 gold per 100 stones, and the futures price also rises to 40 gold per 100 stones, then when the merchant buys the spot, he pays 10 gold more per 100 stones than three months ago, but at the same time, he earns 8 gold on futures (not taking into account the handling fee), and in general, he only loses 2 gold per 100 stones, which is far lower than the risk of not hedging, which resists the risk of price fluctuations.

Of course, hedging, for industrialists, will not lose too much, but will not make too much. For example, in the above example, if the price of grain plummets by 10 gold, like gold bars in later generations, and you do hedging, you can get the spot cheaply, but the futures market will definitely lose a fortune.

This essentially locks in your profit and loss to the point where you are hedging.

By locking in the price in this way, the risk will naturally be resisted, and the businessmen will be very happy to do business. Dai Yan provided this kind of service, and of course the businessmen would warmly welcome it. However, is it really Dai Yan who bears this risk for businessmen?

Definitely! Although Dai Yan opened the grain exchange through the Yi government, Dai Yan was only responsible for checking the futures contracts through the credibility provided by the Yi government, and sent special agency personnel to inspect the grain traded in the warehouse to ensure the quality of the grain. In this process, through this credibility, he can justifiably charge commissions, and this kind of business is a sure profit.

With the huge grain transaction volume and Taoqiu's status as the world's commercial center, Taoqiu's position as the world's commercial center cannot be shaken! Dai Yan just lay in bed and did nothing, just charging the handling fee for futures trading is estimated to become the richest man in the world!

It is a different kind of person who really takes the risk for these industrialists: speculative businessmen.

Because Dai Yan has the experience of later generations, he made the grain futures contract extremely standard. At this time, most of the grain traded in the vicinity of Taoqiu was millet, and although the production areas of these grains were divided into several countries, they were all roughly in the Central Plains and North China of China, and their quality, weight, specifications, and delivery locations could be completely standardized. Merchants don't need to touch the real thing at all, and they don't need to worry about anything wrong with the real thing, they just need to send representatives to openly shout and trade with each other in the venue.

This way of trading is obviously attractive to speculative businessmen. For speculative businessmen, how tiring and dangerous it is to do business. For example, transporting grain from Taoqiu to Linzi in Qi State, who knows if there are bandits on the way? Will there be a sudden war, and the grain will suddenly be requisitioned? This kind of risk, if he doesn't have connections in Qi Country, he won't be able to do this business at all! And even if he has this connection, how much money can he earn from his hard work?

In the futures market, it's a completely different story! They don't need to touch the physical object, they just buy and sell in the market, and make money by forecasting, for example, predicting that the grain will rise, then buy a long contract (forward buying); Buy a short contract in anticipation of a decline (sell forward).

Obviously, this is a game played by decent people, "high-class" businessmen!