In fact, as early as the second quarter of 2005, the real estate market in the United States has shown unusual performance, in this quarter, the originally hot real estate market began to cool down, the most direct embodiment of the stagnation of housing prices, and even some states housing prices have a faint correction momentum.

Once house prices do start to fall, it will inevitably be difficult for buyers to sell their homes or obtain financing through mortgages. And if this phenomenon continues, then many borrowers in the subprime mortgage market will not be able to repay their loans on time, and the subprime mortgage market will inevitably erupt in crisis.

It's just that the hot U.S. real estate market in the early stage blinded almost everyone, and at this point in time, no one would think that the U.S. real estate market would collapse, including almost all the executives of large multinational banks, investment banks, insurance and securities companies in the world.

But the collapse of the market is not transferred by someone's will, although the apparent prosperity makes these large investment institutions still insist on investing large sums of money in those financial derivatives to make profits, but secretly, an undercurrent has begun to faintly appear.

First of all, there was a series of strange financial events on Wall Street, although at this time no one realized that this series of strange financial events would be linked to the collapse of the US real estate, but this series of strange financial events is a precursor to the collapse of the US real estate market!

As the saying goes, "When a country is about to die, there will be demons!" is just as common in the American real estate market.

If the U.S. real estate market is regarded as a huge financial empire, then when this huge financial empire collapses, there will inevitably be some incredible "demons".

The first demon to pop up was the Amaranth Foundation, known as the "Flower of Immortality".

Amaranth is a Greek word that originally means "flower that never dies."

In September 2000, Nicholas Maunis, a Wall Street trader who was proficient in convertible bond trading, established the "Flowers of Never Falling" Advisors Limited, also known as the Amaranth Fund, in Greenwich, Connecticut, USA.

The fund started with a capital of only $600 million, and was mainly engaged in convertible bond arbitrage trading at the beginning, but also involved in some other derivatives trading, and is a multi-strategy hedge fund.

By the end of 2005, the Amaranth Fund had grown to $7.24 billion.

There is a "star" natural gas futures trader in the Amaranth fund, this star trader from Canada is named Brian Hunt, who jumped to the Amaranth fund from Deutsche Bank in 2004, and before working at Deutsche Bank for three years, specializing in natural gas futures trading.

This Mr. Hunter has extensive experience in natural gas futures trading, and his first-class trading style is calm and persistent. In September 2005, he successfully seized the opportunity to go long due to the sharp rise in U.S. natural gas prices due to Hurricane Katrina hitting the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, making more than $1 billion for the Amaranth Fund, and a year-end reward of about $75 million to $100 million.

It can be a Hunter, and a Hunter is a defeat.

Because of the sweetness in natural gas futures trading, coupled with the meager profits of convertible bond arbitrage trading, after entering 2006, the Amaranth fund continued to increase its investment in natural gas futures, using about half of its assets in natural gas futures trading.

In the first four months of 2006, Brian Hunter made $2 billion for the Amaranth fund, and although he lost $1 billion in May, Hunt earned another $1 billion between June and August. At the end of July, Hunt said in an interview that the earnings return of speculative natural gas futures was "huge": "The volatility cycle of the crude oil futures market generally takes several years, while the volatility cycle of the natural gas futures market is only a few months!"

In mid-September 2006, Hunter had earlier "bet" that the price of natural gas futures would rise and established a huge amount of shoulder arbitrage positions of "buying NYMEX natural gas futures 0703 contracts and selling 0704 contracts at the same time" did not develop in the direction of Hunter's judgment, but fell sharply.

On September 18, 2006, Nicholas Maunis, the founder of the Amaranth Fund, suddenly sent a letter to his investors informing them that the Amaranth Fund had suffered significant losses on its investment in energy due to an "unexpected" drop in natural gas prices. Since the Amaranth fund is a well-known "big player" in the NYMEX natural gas futures market, the news of the loss of the Amaranth fund quickly spread throughout the Wall Street financial market on the same day, causing a lot of shock and speculation in the market. On September 19, the New York Times revealed that the Amaranth fund had lost more than $3 billion speculating in natural gas futures!

After the news of the sudden loss of the Amaranth fund spread, its investors, lending banks, and partners demanded that it return the loan and margin, and Amaranth was forced to close the loss-making position at a discount.

However, due to its excessive position in natural gas futures, the accelerated decline in futures prices increased the losses of its original positions by the end of September 2006, and the losses of the Amaranth Fund widened to $6.6 billion, or more than 70% of its total assets.

In the end, Amaranth Fund surrendered and went into liquidation. The flowers that never fade on Wall Street fall slowly in the cold wind.

Investors who invested in the Amaranth fund included Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, 3M Pension Fund, and the National Pension Fund Association of San Diego, all of whom suffered serious losses in the end.

The second evil is the well-known alternative asset management and financial advisory service provider "Blackstone Group" in the United States, which is commonly known as the Blackstone Group.

If you want to talk about this matter, it has something to do with Huaxia.

In 2007, the newly established CIC embarked on its first outbound investment. At that time, CIC bought a 9.4% stake in Blackstone for $3 billion.

At this time, Blackstone took over EOP Real Estate, which owns commercial real estate in prime locations in many large cities, from Sam Zell, who is known as the "real estate Buffett", with a leveraged buyout of $39 billion.

At the same time, Sam Zell acquired Tribune Media Group, which owns the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, for $8.3 billion.

These series of transactions seem to be flawless, but no one expected that Sam Zell had just taken over the Forum Group, but it went bankrupt due to poor management, and Blackstone took over the apex of American real estate, so China's investment in Blackstone ended in a loss of $2.4 billion!

The appearance of the two demons, the Amaranth Fund and the Blackstone Group, may seem unrelated on the surface, but don't forget that the main investors of the Amaranth Fund suffered badly after the Amaranth Fund declared bankruptcy!

Take a look at the major investors in the Amaranth Fund, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, 3M Pension Fund, and the National Pension Fund Association of San Diego have not only invested in the Amaranth Fund, but they have invested heavily in the U.S. real estate market. There was also the Blackstone Group, which also invested heavily in the US real estate market at that time!

These investment institutions that have invested heavily in speculation in the U.S. real estate market will inevitably affect their investment in the U.S. real estate market after suffering significant losses in other aspects. So, in a flash, these seemingly unrelated investment failures led to the beginning of the collapse of the U.S. housing market.

Since the second half of 2006, the U.S. housing market has begun to cool down rapidly, and the danger of the subprime mortgage crisis detonating has become increasingly great. At the beginning of 2007, the subprime mortgage crisis finally could no longer be held back and was completely detonated!

In February 2007, New Century Financial Corporation, the second largest subprime mortgage company in the United States, issued a profit warning for the fourth quarter of last year, and on April 2, New Century Financial declared bankruptcy due to its inability to repay debts of up to $17.4 billion.

In March 2007, HSBC Holdings announced its results and increased its provisions for subprime housing credit in the United States by US$7 billion, totaling US$10.573 billion, an increase of 33.6%, and the stock market fell sharply on the same day, with the Hang Seng Index falling 777 points, or 4%.

On August 2, 2007, the German Industrial Bank announced a profit warning, and later estimated a loss of 8.2 billion euros due to the huge losses suffered by its 12.7 billion euro "Rhineland Fund" and the bank's own small participation in the US real estate subprime mortgage market. The Bundesbank convened the nation's interbank to discuss a package to save the German Industrial Bank.

On August 6, 2007, the 10th largest mortgage lender in the United States, the American Home Mortgage Investment Corporation, formally filed for bankruptcy protection with the court, becoming the second large mortgage institution in the United States to file for bankruptcy after New Century Financial Corporation.

On August 8, 2007, Bear Stearns, the fifth-largest investment bank in the United States, announced the collapse of two of its funds, also due to the subprime mortgage crisis.

On August 9, 2007, BNP Paribas, France's largest bank, announced that it would freeze three of its funds, also suffering huge losses due to investment in US subprime mortgage bonds. The move sent European stock markets tumbling.

On August 13, 2007, Mizuho Group, the parent company of Mizuho Bank, Japan's second-largest bank, announced a loss of 600 million yen related to subprime mortgages in the United States. Japanese and Korean banks have already suffered losses due to the subprime mortgage crisis in the United States. According to estimates by UBS Securities Japan, Japan's nine largest banks already hold more than 1 trillion yen in U.S. subordinated mortgage-backed securities.

Later, Citigroup also announced that the loss caused by the subprime mortgage crisis in July 2007 reached 700 million US dollars, which eventually caused Citibank's stock price to fall from 23 US dollars per share to 3 US dollars per share in just half a year, and the market value fell by 90%

A series of negative news has stunned the United States and even the whole world, and the subprime mortgage crisis in the United States has inevitably evolved into a global financial crisis.

Two houses in the United States were managed by the U.S. government, Bear Stearns, the fifth largest investment bank in the United States, was acquired by **** for $236 million, Merrill Lynch was acquired by Bank of America, and Lehman Brothers died completely

In particular, the collapse of Lehman Brothers, which had a total asset value of $700 billion at that time, directly detonated the global economic crisis!