Hegel once said, "Human nature remains unchanged for thousands of years and never learns from history." (Another translation of this statement is: The only lesson that history has to teach is that people never learn from history.) I slightly disagree with this assertion of Hegel, as humans are continuously striving for self-improvement and progress. However, on Wall Street, where money is the stage, Hegel's adage rings true, revealing the weaknesses of human greed and fear.

There is a common saying on Wall Street: "Bulls and bears are not to be feared, but pigs are." The so-called "pig market" implies a stagnant market, akin to a motionless pond. Without the ebb and flow of volume, where does the question "Where's the Beef?" come from? How then can Wall Street make money? Therefore, Wall Street thrives on the ups and downs of the market, ideally riding a "roller coaster" every day. Before taking positions, they might go long while singing the praises of the short side (to buy low), or go short while singing the praises of the long side (to sell high); or after establishing positions, they might go short while singing the praises of the short side, or go long while singing the praises of the long side, to reap huge profits. However, to "make the clouds rain and the sun shine" in the financial markets, one must exploit the weaknesses of human nature.

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Wall Street exists on trading volume. How to generate and increase this volume? On Wall Street, various stocks, bonds, and derivative products are the "supply." The price of any commodity is determined by supply and demand, with supply as the denominator and demand as the numerator. And because human nature is greedy, Wall Street must find ways to transform this greed into demand.

For example, sometimes we hear very enticing news, such as a stock that has increased tenfold in a year, or a sector with significant bullish news, indicating that "demand" is about to increase. With "supply" remaining constant, the stock market will rise. But a continuous rise is not feasible either; if the prices get too high, with only buyers and no sellers, won't the trading volume drop? Fortunately, humans also have a timid and fearful side. Once the bullish news is exhausted, the bearish bad news naturally follows, and everyone gets scared, leading to a decrease in "demand." Once "demand" decreases, the ratio of demand to supply drops, and the stock market falls.

As China's economy continues to develop, its demand for commodities is enormous, which is crucial for Wall Street. Wall Street can manipulate the prices of commodities to earn huge profits.

For instance, the American beverage giant Coca-Cola once announced plans to increase the price of its beverages by 3% to 4% to cope with the rising cost of aluminum for canning. At the same time, Coca-Cola filed a lawsuit with the London Metal Exchange (LME), accusing Wall Street investment banks like Goldman Sachs of driving up the price of aluminum by controlling the shipment of metals from warehouses.

According to the current warehousing trading rules of the London Metal Exchange, warehouses must provide (ship) at least 1,500 tons of metal per day. Although there are at least 200,000 tons of aluminum metal currently stockpiled in Goldman Sachs' warehouses in Detroit, waiting to be shipped, Goldman Sachs only ships the minimum requirement of 1,500 tons per day, like squeezing toothpaste. This means that when traders request delivery of aluminum today, buyers will have to wait over six months to receive the goods. This allows Goldman Sachs to artificially distort the supply and demand relationship through the manipulation of warehouse receipts, affecting the spot price and achieving the goal of controlling the spot market.

In addition to speculating on commodity prices, today's crude oil prices have long defied the traditional laws of supply and demand. The price of oil is controlled within a carefully designed financial market system and in the hands of the four major Anglo-American oil companies. It can be said that as much as 60% of the crude oil price is purely inflated by large investment banks and hedge funds.

How do they achieve this?

They do so by creating artificial supply and demand imbalances, leveraging financial instruments to speculate on oil prices, and influencing market sentiment through various strategies. These practices, while potentially profitable for the financial institutions involved, can lead to market instability and have broader economic implications.Firstly, the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX in New York) and the ICE Futures in London are two crucial players in this game. They control the benchmark oil prices of the global market today through the futures contracts of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) and North Sea Brent, which in turn set the volume of most so-called "free" traded oil.

However, the oil prices are determined by a handful of large investment banks engaged in oil trading under extremely opaque conditions. For instance, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have intimate knowledge of who wants to buy and who wants to sell crude oil futures or oil derivative securities contracts, using this information to set the spot crude oil prices. For most people, this is the unfamiliar new world of "paper oil." As former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once said: "Who controls the energy can control whole continents..."

Although oil is a special commodity that is depleted when used up, the pricing power of oil is held by a minority of financial capital, hence oil prices often completely deviate from the law of supply and demand, fluctuating and unstable.

Due to the extreme asymmetry of information, whenever the so-called "market conditions" arise, it is the time for market makers, big players, and institutions to create disturbances. They often seize the initiative, entering the market one or even several steps ahead, driving up market prices. When retail investors see the rise and cannot resist the temptation to follow suit, all the bullish factors have already been reflected in the market, and often at an excessively high level. As a result, it is always the small retail investors who end up losing. This cycle repeats itself time and again, truly a testament that where there is desire, there is no rest for money!