Chapter 114

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Translated by Heavenly Cat

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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The staff were getting headaches.

Because Trent, that crazy old man, had given another strange order.

From the very start of his term, he kept saying he’d nuke North Korea.

He kept saying he’d withdraw the US military.

Knowing full well that Korea is the best option for keeping China and North Korea in check, watching him give thoughtless orders made the Secretary of Defense and various generals break out in cold sweat.

And now he was trying to have another country’s institution and a company handle a national problem.

No matter how much it’s America, they have absolutely no reason to follow such irrational and unreasonable orders.

That’s not all.

The other side holds vaccines.

This was no different from asymmetric power.

Isn’t the one with vaccines currently the one with supreme power?

“So what happened?”

“Th-that’s……”

But something unbelievable happened even to the reporting staff.

“They say they’ll do it.”

“Gwangwoon?”

“Not just Gwangwoon, but the National Pension also replied they’ll do what our US government wants.”

At those words, Trent clapped his hands!

“I told you. Those bastards have no choice but to do what we want. You dare try to threaten America—no, me? Fat chance.”

The staff were honestly baffled too.

If the National Pension and Gwangwoon enter the market now, it’s a structure where they can only lose.

It’s a continuous crash, isn’t it?

If they put money in, they’ll see their accounts continuously draining.

“How about that? We saved a lot of taxes with this, right? This is how you do politics. We can take the money saved through Gwangwoon and the National Pension and use it elsewhere.”

“Wh-where do you plan to use it……”

“Where else? The Mexico wall construction.”

“……”

Again with that wall.

The staff just blankly stared at Trent who was full of himself.

“Mr. President. But isn’t something too strange about this?”

That’s when the Chief of Staff mustered up courage.

“What?”

“It’s a market where anyone can see they’ll lose. But isn’t it suspicious that they follow our words without any resistance? And the opponent is that Gwangwoon.”

Gwangwoon’s investment track record is astounding.

In other words, they’re people who absolutely don’t do losing business.

And such people are just entering this market recklessly?

With the National Pension at that?

“It’s over 1 trillion dollars. If even 1% drops, they take tremendous losses, but entering with no conditions at all is too strange.”

“No conditions, you say. They short sold against our America to make money, and got cocky because they had vaccines and dared to threaten me. Once I said I’d withdraw the US military, revoke tariffs and FTA, and crush the ongoing North Korea negotiations—they naturally tucked their tails.”

On the surface, that’s true.

The US government threatened Gwangwoon and South Korea to force investment.

But who is Gwangwoon?

They’re people who never submit to anyone.

Not content with charging head-on against nations, they’re crazy bastards who cause financial crises to prevent governments from functioning properly.

“When the EU forcibly dismantled Gwangwoon’s shipping, the reaction was exactly like this. They didn’t resist at all and sold shipping at very high prices according to the EU’s wishes. And you know well what happened as a result, Mr. President.”

Gwangwoon is currently reclaiming companies at less than 20% of the price they sold.

“But isn’t the situation different from then this time? Those experts with good academic credentials came and told me. That putting money into the current market is just throwing money away.”

“That’s true, but……”

“What else did they say? That if massive money is injected, the market will temporarily rise, but unless they invest only in stocks that will rise, they’ll inevitably lose?”

“……”

“You think I don’t have thoughts? I’m doing this because I have intentions too. The global market is a minefield right now—can they invest while avoiding each and every one of those mines?”

There’s a saying.

Buy when there’s fear.

And everyone knows.

That you should buy in fear.

But when truly facing fear, 99 out of 100 people hesitate.

Because they’re afraid of taking tremendous losses if they put money in wrong.

Even institutions are dumping holdings in terror right now.

Even if 1 trillion dollars is dropped at once here, some will rise, but some will definitely fall.

As Trent says, it’s a minefield.

Aren’t hundreds of companies closing their doors daily even now?

“Eventually they’ll lose money, and we win again. As always.”

Trent drained his drink and smiled with satisfaction.

Actually, nothing Trent said was wrong.

How can you invest while avoiding every single one in this chaotic market scattered with mines? No matter how hard you try, you’re bound to step on a mine.

Unless you have the ability to see the future.

But there’s no such person in the world.

“……”

The staff were forcibly matching Trent’s mood as he was excitedly self-congratulating, while suffering from a strange anxiety on the other hand.

The US stock market being dragged into an abyss.

The moment you dip your feet in, you get sucked into a black hole together.

But… if it’s Gwangwoon, could they possibly…?

————————————————————————————————————————

“President. Here’s the overall current status of the US stock market.”

When we say the overall status of the US stock market, you just need to know 3 main ones.

Dow Jones, S&P, and Nasdaq.

You need to look at these three situations, and when you break down the data, this is where it becomes advanced.

“Market cap data, sector indicators, market internal indicators, investment sentiment indicators and bond volatility, etc. I extracted them by analyzing liquidity.”

Maybe because I’m experienced now.

Even glancing through the data, I quickly grasped how the market situation was.

“Well, in a word, it’s nothing short of a fiery hell. Not burning from rising, but literally money is burning and disappearing.”

Putting money into the US market right now was like scattering bills over fire.

In fact, didn’t the US scatter tens of billions of dollars to save the collapsing market, only for it to evaporate quickly?

“For bills not to burn in fire, ultimately the key is selection. You have to distinguish whether this is a time bomb or ore that will become money.”

“If we select well, it becomes money?”

“Yes. The problem is that’s extremely difficult. One fortunate thing is that no matter how much money we put in, they won’t interfere at all.”

Normally, if you inject large amounts into the market, trading gets halted by each country’s financial supervisory service.

But America gave us the right to freely inject money under the name of bailout.

In other words, just like the US government injected tens of billions at once to save finance, we can do the same without issue.

“It’s actually absurd.”

There have been governments injecting trillions into financial markets, but an institution stepping up to do a bailout on behalf was a first in history.

“But if we can separate the gems from the rocks well, it’s a golden opportunity for us. You’ve been wanting to enter the market more than anyone, haven’t you, President?”

Now that all those monitoring eyes and shackles have disappeared, I could finally unleash all the investment desire I’d been holding back.

“Here are the stocks selected and organized.”

I received the document and opened it.

“……”

The first page was burning brightly.

It was dyed all red to the point where even the paper felt like its temperature was rising hot.

I quickly turned to the next page.

This one was somewhat better.

“I heard America put conditions on letting us pour money freely?”

“Yes. Since we could day trade, the condition from their side was to hold for at least 3 months no matter what we buy.”

If we pour too much money in, it could greatly disrupt the market, and we could repeatedly put in and take out from there, so America put conditions.

Minimum 3 months.

It was a fatal condition for a securities firm that mainly does day trading, but actually I was looking at up to 6 months.

‘From here it’s completely different again.’

Because as you can see from this page after next.

The US market will hit bottom, rebound, and achieve a great bull market.

Simply put, an unprecedented golden age is coming.

Looking at data alone, it seems like it’ll drill through the mantle, but at least my intuition was showing me that.

‘First, I need to scoop up all the large-cap stocks.’

Indeed, the blue chips still had delectable colors.

There’s a reason Warren Buffett advised to invest only in companies that will never fail.

So I checked off stocks one by one as I flipped through the document.

I cut everything that seemed slightly ambiguous and picked only what looked certain.

This wasn’t just putting our company’s money in, but the National Pension’s money had to go in together, so I was even more careful.

As I reached nearly the end.

“…?”

There was one shining brighter than any color I’d seen.

“Zoom?”

“Ah, Zoom. It’s a video chat program. With the coronavirus pandemic, the number of companies working from home has increased, hasn’t it? Currently, various video programs are being used, and Zoom is one of them.”

As the proportion of remote work rapidly increased, programs for video conferencing were trending.

The problem was there was currently competition within that space.

“But this Zoom’s stock price has dropped a lot?”

“Yes. There are many other chat programs too, and above all, every market is currently in a crazy downtrend, so this place couldn’t help it either.”

But unlike anything else, light was brilliantly sparkling particularly here.

I circled that stock multiple times.

“Please carefully look at the stocks I’ve checked and organize what ratios we should use for investment. Once the review is done, send it to the National Pension side.”

“Ah, yes. President.”

Zoom, huh……

A place where market cap isn’t even that high.

For it to shine that much……

‘Is the stock price going to rise 3-4x?’

————————————————————————————————————————

The National Pension executives were initially very happy.

Because after making the massive short selling, money had grown to 1,000 trillion.

Also, having heard that the US and other great powers were sensitively monitoring the National Pension and Gwangwoon, they were holding all money except for simple investments.

So they naturally believed all the National Pension’s money would flow to bonds and safe assets.

“Chairman. Th-this is madness!”

But something completely outside their expectations happened.

“Injecting 1,000 trillion into the US market all at once!”

“That’s right! Not even building positions over months. 1,000 trillion at once is a scale the US market can’t even absorb. The biggest problem is it’s blatant market manipulation.”

The Chairman knows all this too.

Because he’s someone with more experience than anyone here.

“That’s why I told you. It’s something America permitted. And from the White House no less.”

It was absurd.

The White House pushing the National Pension’s back to disrupt the market as much as they want!

“But if we enter now, it’s really going to be a disaster. We could lose all the money we painstakingly earned.”

“That’s why Gwangwoon sent us selected stocks. Just follow that.”

“B-but…!”

Before it got noisier, the Chairman raised his hand to silence them.

“Then what do you want to do? Are you going to go to the White House and confront them? They’re bringing out only problems that negatively affect our Korean diplomacy—military withdrawal, FTA, US-Korea alliance, etc. Can you solve those?”

“……”

“I know what everyone’s worried about. But once we decided to trust Gwangwoon, we should trust them to the end. They seem to have prepared for this situation in advance too.”

“Are you saying rather, Gwangwoon was waiting for this?”

“It’s my feeling, but… that’s what I think.”

Gwangwoon was waiting to do this crazy thing?

Looking at their track record, it’s certainly plausible.

But it was too scary a market to enter now.

“So hurry up and prepare. Gwangwoon also said to prepare to deploy as quickly as possible. Everyone knows, right? What determines victory or defeat in financial markets is timing.”

The executives couldn’t say anything more.

The government side had already decided to keep the Chairman in that seat for now after hearing about this performance.

They decided to have hearings after the situation somewhat calmed down to determine right and wrong.

First, making money is the most important thing, isn’t it?

In other words, the only person who can bend the Chairman’s will now is one.

Jeong Jin-ho.

And Jeong Jin-ho was rather encouraging them to do something even crazier.

“Are we really proceeding like this?”

“Ha. What kind of absurd… Isn’t that Trent guy also crazy? Giving an indulgence for this?”

After the meeting ended, the executives held their heads.

Because events that made absolutely no sense to their common sense were happening consecutively.

“But really, what happens if we inject 1,000 trillion all at once?”

“What happens? Literally a bombing, bombing! Not 100 trillion but a whopping 1,000 trillion?! It’s unprecedented in financial history.”

Even the US government wouldn’t drop 1,000 trillion into the financial market at once, maybe if it was gradually with intervals.

“But Korea’s National Pension is doing this, and even with America’s permission?”

It still felt like a lie.

“Isn’t this basically a large-scale air raid, honestly?”

That was a very accurate expression.

Large-scale air raid.

But now with dollars included……