Texas, which was once barren, was flooded with people because of the discovery of amazing oil reserves, and some people became billionaires overnight. They have huge mansions, champion football teams, and even compete with the president of the United States for power, trying to manipulate the international market.
In the 1920s, many people heard about the myth of oil, so they converted their farms into some cash and went to the west alone. They dream of making a fortune and living a new life in Texas, but this is a gamble, and more people fail to realize their honey-like wishes.
/kloc-in the summer of 0/930, in El dorado, a "wildcat exploration team" drilled three wells in succession, but did not squeeze out a drop of oil. However, there are still a large number of people pouring into the city, including a muscular man, 6 feet tall, wearing a shirt and tie and a hard straw hat. His name is Haroldson Lafayette Hunt, and he later became the founder of Hunter Oil, the second largest oil company in the United States. Before coming to El dorado, he lived in a small town in the southern United States and made a living by gambling poker games and making exciting cotton futures.
According to Hunt's memories many years later, thousands of people are flocking to Huang Jinguo, hoping to find more oil. It sounds exciting, so he asks himself, "What do you want to do? Are you going to be buried here all your life? "
The most famous deal of the 20th century.
When he first arrived in Huang Jinguo, Hunter decided to start small, so he rented half an acre of land outside the city with some friends, bought an abandoned old drilling rig and began to dig the first well.
Fortunately, he found oil in his first well, and the output was quite good, but there was no oil in a few weeks. Hunter tried to sell the well to an independent prospector, but failed. Hunter was frustrated by this experience, but as he said many years later, "this incident achieved the goal of getting me started in the oil industry."
After thinking, Hunter realized that he needed to find potential land and have the right to use it in order to establish a profitable oil company, so he raised $200 from his friends and persuaded a local farmer to rent him 40 acres of farmland. From 1922, Hunter oil well began to produce oil with considerable output.
1926, Hunter formally established his own company in Huang Jinguo, which is now the famous Hunter Oil. He soon became a rich man with more than 65,438+000 oil wells in El dorado and Shreveport.
At this time, he turned his attention to Texas. Through a negotiation, he became one of the richest and most legendary businessmen in America.
In fact, Hunter didn't have any money when he met Joyner in Texas, but when joiner said he needed money, Hunter immediately said he could invest. Hunter can always raise money, but before he can, joiner is forced to hide.
In order to raise funds, Joyner sold investment certificates to dozens of local people. As long as it pays $65,438+000, it can get the income of 4 acres of land given by each certificate. Joiner has prepared 320 acres of land, which means that only the first 80 certificates are valid, resulting in multiple buyers for each land.
At the same time, Hunter studied the land in the north and west of Joinet, and he was full of confidence. He believes that the key issue is not drilling near the land leased by joiner, but buying the lease right of joiner. Joiner's legal dilemma at this time is Hunter's best chance.
Joiner wants 50 thousand dollars in advance, and there will be more later They started chatting, talking about life, talking about family, talking about East Texas, and talking about Daisy Bradford No.3 oil well, which was highly regarded at that time.
They negotiated until midnight. Hunter concealed the news that the new oil well of Deep Well Company produced oil, and forced joiner to compromise constantly. At dawn the next day, they preliminarily agreed on the outline of the agreement. Hunter's lawyer and stenographer put their dictation into terms and began the final signing ceremony.
Hunter agreed to pay $30,000 in advance and $6.5438+$305,000 in subsequent payments. At this time, Hunter only had $65,438+009, of which $30,000 was borrowed from a friend.
This is a historic news, and Texans are dumbfounded. In the next few months, people began to discover how big the East Texas oil field was, and the Hunt-joiner transaction became one of the most influential transactions in the 20th century.
Hunter used to be a professional gambler. He controlled the heart of the largest oil field in American history, which produced nearly 4 billion barrels of oil in the following 50 years.
Silver war
Harold Lafayette Hunter, the founder of Hunter family, died in 1974, but the legendary history of Hunter family has just begun.
In 1970s, silver, as a circulation tool, was highly mobile in the international market. However, the Hunt family almost monopolized the silver market with its strong financial resources and political and business relations, which led to the soaring price of silver. Some people say that if it weren't for the intervention of the US government, the Hunt family would squeeze all the short sellers in the world.
Nelson is one of the cleverest sons of old Hunter. He planned this amazing deal, took charge of Hunter Drilling and Production Company, took charge of oil exploitation all over the world, and held rich "legacy" and "new money" in his hand.
He and his younger brother William persuaded the Saudi prince with huge wealth to invest in it, and accumulated hundreds of millions of ounces of silver in a few years, enough to make the central bank of any country tremble.
1in the summer of 979, Nelson's duel with silver merchants from all over the world began. He sent a total of 40 million ounces of buying orders to the futures exchanges in new york and Chicago through the International Metal Investment Corporation, and the price of silver soared immediately, from 1 1 USD to $30, and simply broke through $40 at the close of 1979.
The hunting family manipulated 53% of the silver futures contracts in the New York Mercantile Exchange and 69% of the silver futures contracts in Chicago Board of Trade, totaling 654.38+0.2 billion ounces of spot and 50 million ounces of futures-not including the silver held by Saudi Arabian investors in their own names. At that time, the global silver trading volume was only about 20 million ounces per year, and the Hunter family had cut off the channels of silver circulation.
These actions angered the US government and many exchanges. The Chicago Board of Trade took the lead. It stipulates that the deposit of $65,438+$0,000 should be raised to $6,000, which means that the Hunt family must replenish a lot of capital quickly. In order to curb inflation, the newly appointed Federal Reserve Chairman Volcker decided to tighten the money supply and make it more difficult to lend. In the following two months, the Hunt family borrowed $80 million from bankers, equivalent to 10% of new loans in the United States during the same period.
The New York Mercantile Exchange saw that the Hunters refused to eat, insisted on sitting in the village, and finally lost patience. Shortly after the price of silver reached $50, the New York Mercantile Exchange issued a temporary regulation: from now on, it is forbidden to establish new silver futures contracts, and only the old contracts are allowed to be closed. This means that the Hunt family can no longer buy any silver from the futures market, and the total number of silver futures contracts will only continue to decrease. No one can manipulate the price by buying and selling in large quantities.
In this way, the Hunter family collapsed. Later, Nelson sold his beloved racehorse and filed for bankruptcy protection.
Under the names of other children of Old Hunter, some industries survived, including Hunter's oil headquarters, hotels, football and so on. However, the Hunt family, which has been greatly weakened, is no longer the decisive business role of that year.