The weather is getting colder. Many areas in the North are covered with snow. But Beijing had snowflakes twice, but when the wind blows, the snow will be gone.
Feng Yu had just alighted from the plane, and his driver came to pick him up. Feng Yu can go home and rest for a few days after he finishes his work in Hong Kong.
Feng Yu no longer needs to monitor the oil futures market. Things are as he expected. Oil prices continue to fall.
The financial crisis had erupted, and the oil futures prices had fallen. Those who thought the oil prices will rebound when the stock market falls had suffered heavy losses.
There were also those who invested in gold futures with high leverage. All of them probably couldn't even cry anymore. Their tears had long dried up.
They did not expect the impact of the financial crisis to be so huge. The entire financial industry had fallen. Stocks, futures, funds, currencies, etc. had fallen. None of the world's major markets were spared.
Feng Yu was not the only one who caused the oil futures to fall. Many European and US financial groups were also involved.
These large consortiums have also suffered significant losses in this financial crisis. Which financial group does not have a financial company?
These financial groups had lost money, and what will they do? Of course, they will choose to earn back their losses.
If these financial groups can work together, they can manipulate the market to a certain extent and use other products to earn back their losses. For example, they can use high leverage futures.
When the oil prices fell below 100 USD, the OPEC members felt it was about right. 80 to 100 USD was the price they had in mind, and this is the most beneficial for them. The US, Hua Xia, and other major oil importers will also be satisfied with this price.
But they did not expect the financial crisis to hit them, and the oil prices started to fall. At this time, the OPEC members were panicking. What happened? Why did oil prices become so cheap?
Many of their countries still owe a lot of debts and urgently need to sell their oil to repay their debts. If not, they will need to extract more oil.
The oil prices had fallen, and the debt can be paid off with 1 million barrels. Now, they need to extract almost 2 million barrels. In order to repay their debts, they must extract more oil.
This formed a vicious cycle. High production will cause the supply to exceed the demand. Based on the market rules, the oil prices will fall.
When the oil prices fall, they must increase production, and increasing production will cause the oil prices to fall. This is an endless cycle. Unless they could pay off their debts, they could only bring down the price of crude oil by limiting production.
Don't think that OPEC members are really rich. Apart from war-torn countries like Iraq and Iran, even countries like the United Arab Emirates owe a lot of foreign debt.
In the Middle East, many people did not know much about economics. In recent years, they mainly united to sell oil, natural gas, and other things to make money. Occasionally, they also sold some chemical products.
When the price of crude oil was good, they could make a lot of money, so they became arrogant. He had made all sorts of promises to the people of the country, and in order to fulfill his promises, he was willing to borrow money.
For example, to prosper the domestic tourism industry, it was necessary to build some world-class hotels. One was definitely not enough. They had to build more. Three or five wasn't too little, ten or eight wasn't too much. If they didn't have the money, they could get a loan to build it.
Putting aside the fact that tourism itself was a long-term investment, there was no tourism that could recover its costs and make a profit in a short period of time. Tourists were not stupid.
Did they have to build a luxurious hotel just to travel? Other people mainly came here for sightseeing. The beach, the sea, and even the desert were all attractions. But was the hotel considered a tourist attraction?
They saw that many hotels in Las Vegas and other cities made a lot of money, so they wanted to imitate them. Not only did they build five-star hotels, but many of them were five-star and above.
But cities like Las Vegas were gambling cities. Many people won money there, so they naturally wanted to enjoy it. They would not feel bad spending money.
But there were many ordinary tourists who came to the United Arab Emirates. How could they be willing to spend money? Which rich person would think that a hotel was better than home? When they traveled, they did not want to see the scenery, but to stay in a hotel?
And the United Arab Emirates did not have special publicity before. How could there be so many tourists? The higher the hotel vacancy rate, the higher the hotel price to make up for the loss. This was a vicious cycle.
Why was the hotel price so expensive? An ordinary suite was comparable to a presidential suite.
The United Arab Emirates also had to learn from Saudi Arabia. They wanted to build a large city and invest in infrastructure, but these were not profitable.
It was good for the people to invest in infrastructure, but they could not borrow money to do it. The debt would increase, and for a country like the United Arab Emirates, which had almost no foreign exchange reserves, it was dangerous.
To avoid being unable to repay the debt, the United Arab Emirates was the first to increase production, and the other member countries followed suit. When Feng Yu saw this, he could not stop smiling.
Even if he had a mountain of gold and silver at home, he could not afford to have two prodigal children.
If the OPEC member countries could be truly united and maintain the same economic, monetary, and even part of the laws like the European Union, OPEC would definitely be a powerful organization.
It was a pity that this organization was too loose. There were still countries coming in and out, and they could not form a force at all.
They did not know to find the reason for the drop in crude oil prices. Instead, they just increased production. Wasn't this digging a hole for themselves?
They sold so much crude oil every year, but they did not know to save some foreign exchange reserves. When someone manipulated the crude oil prices, they did not even have the power to resist. What a failure.
Saudi Arabia, as the leader, did not do anything. Maybe this was also their strategy.
The other countries were not convinced. If they encountered a crisis, Saudi Arabia could easily get through it. We have enough foreign exchange reserves. Also, there were not many areas where our country needed to spend money. Everything that needed to be built had already been built.
Let's see who dares to go against me in the future. If I say to limit production, then it should be limited. If I say to increase production, then it will increase production. You all are still the ones suffering from this!
Anyway, regardless of whether these speculations were true, the crude oil prices continued to fall and had fallen below the 60 USD line. This had shocked many people.
The 60 USD line was considered a safe price. But they did not expect the crude oil prices to fall below the 60 USD line and continue to fall.
Will crude oil prices fall to the same level as the previous century? Only 10 USD per barrel?
Of course not. This was because Feng Yu and the rest had started to cancel their contracts, and those European and American conglomerates had also started to cancel their contracts and start to reap the profits.
But in this life, crude oil futures were more volatile than the previous life. Feng Yu even suspected that crude oil prices might fall to 30 USD.
Including inflation, it was even lower than a dozen USD in the last century!
Seems like this time, the profits will be higher than expected.
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