Chapter 127

===================

Translated by Heavenly Cat

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

===================

“Is the position cleanup done?”

“Yes. We’ve collected everything we had spread in Europe. As much as possible without shocking the market. The overall market did drop unavoidably, but since it had risen so much, the EU doesn’t seem to mind much.”

“Profits?”

Manager Seo swallowed dryly before answering.

“The National Pension’s total conversion result is 800 trillion, and ours is 120 trillion.”

“Wow, we finally exceeded 100 trillion too? And 120 trillion at that?!”

“Wait, National Pension 800 trillion? Combined with what’s tied up in other markets, the National Pension is at 1,800 trillion?”

“No. The National Pension tied up elsewhere also has profits of 20%. So how much would that be?”

“2-2,000 trillion?!”

When the government’s policy came out to entrust all the National Pension money to Gwangwoon Asset Management, I heard there were quite a few who opposed it.

“Hearing this profit rate, those people will surely shut their mouths.”

That would be inevitable.

We are now living in the era of 2,000 trillion won National Pension.

“However, the National Pension side has requested that we invest as safely as possible going forward.”

“But our profit rate is this good?”

“Now they’re getting scared. It’s an enormous profit rate, but if they suddenly start losing from here, it could all go to waste.”

“I guess. I understand how the National Pension side feels. Even though we’ve worked under the President for a long time, we still get our hearts racing every time he makes a big investment. How must those people feel?”

I thought about it briefly too.

If I were a National Pension executive, and had gone all-in on some company…

And if that company suddenly shorted 700 trillion, then later bombed the US market disrupting it, and later said they’d day-trade with hundreds of trillions in Europe—how would I feel?

“…”

I probably wouldn’t be able to sleep.

I might wake up every night from nightmares of all the National Pension money vanishing into thin air.

“What should we do? Originally when the National Pension entrusted their money to us, they said any style of management was fine.”

“Plus our Prime Department funds have grown to 120 trillion. Isn’t it time to take the safe route? At this amount, everyone goes to safe assets because of liquidity anyway.”

The larger the fund scale, the shorter the stride becomes.

Even if you want to move funds as you please, there are regulations in each country’s markets, and above all, limited liquidity.

Even if you want to recklessly buy some stock, if there’s no supply, no matter how much money you have, you can’t buy.

Also, when the fund scale is large, making 1% is a lot of money, and losing 1% is substantial loss.

So when you get big, everyone naturally seeks out safe assets and buries them for a long time.

“But that’s no fun, is it?”

“Ah…”

But if I had to do such ordinary investing, I could leave this securities firm without regrets right now.

The reason I remain in this investment world is because nothing else stimulates and energizes me like this.

The crystallization of dopamine that can’t be felt in games.

It’s not just loyalty to my hyung, but I seemed to be captivated by the taste of this stimulating, addictive world that can’t be found anywhere else.

“But the National Pension is our main client, right? Then we should do as the client wishes. It’s not like there’s anywhere to pour large amounts of money into right now.”

But right now there wasn’t a suitable place to move the National Pension money to.

I was planning to leave what’s in the US market alone and bury the rest in safe assets as the National Pension wanted.

“Still, please tell the National Pension side. As we promised originally, we can move the money in whatever direction Gwangwoon wants at any time.”

“Yes. I’ll make sure to convey that.”

But if another good opportunity comes, I can pull all that money and use it at any time.

Isn’t this a world where special situations like corona can happen at any time?

“President. Have you seen the GameStop stock price?”

“Hm? No.”

“It went up 15% in just yesterday alone. Wall Street must have been surprised.”

Going up while receiving all kinds of attacks from Wall Street.

But it wasn’t that high a figure.

“But the stock price dropped so much that 15% is still a normal level, isn’t it?”

“Yes. There are also a lot of short-sellers gathered, and many forces had already taken positions, so 15% won’t be enough to cause a short squeeze. But if it goes up more from here, people will start saying it’s getting dangerous.”

“Of course, looking at the current atmosphere, it did spike briefly, but it seems like it’ll fall back again soon.”

It’s a temporary rise.

“So what should we do, President?”

I looked at GameStop briefly.

“…”

A strong feeling was transmitted.

Then does this mean I should pour money in this time?

So I also wrote an amount next to it.

“…?”

But it wasn’t the amount I expected.

“We put in 1 million dollars last time, right?”

“Yes. That’s correct.”

“…Put in the same amount again this time.”

“Only 1 million dollars…?”

“Yes. And please report to me about GameStop every day.”

“Ah, yes.”

The feeling hit strongly, so I thought I’d pour in a lot of money to do something.

But it seems that’s not it either.

What on earth is about to happen here?

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

After corona, economies around the world collapsed.

And in some circles, extreme talk emerged that the end had finally arrived.

In their view, the chaos brought by border shutdowns and manufacturing halts due to virus transmission risks affected all industries.

But the world didn’t end as they wished.

Of course, some industries died, but conversely, other industries were experiencing explosive growth.

“Nasdaq is up again today. The growth rate of tech stocks is truly insane. Ampple, Microhard, Bluezone, AMC, etc. They’re rising like crazy.”

Explosive rise of tech stocks.

Due to corona, everyone was restricted from going out and stuck at home, turning into a world where people stared at phones and computers all day.

So related stocks grew.

Especially what caught Raynold’s eye was Enflix and AMC.

“Enflix’s stock price is quite high, isn’t it? An insane figure.”

“Yes. PER has exceeded 100, and PBR is also over 20, yet the stock price keeps rising.”

This level of figures was truly an extreme overvaluation.

Enflix is leading the OTT industry.

How many people laughed when Enflix first said they’d enter OTT?

But only one place.

Only Gwangwoon didn’t look down on them.

Rather, they poured in massive funds and succeeded in turning Enflix into an OTT giant.

“And AMC has finally overtaken Emvidia.”

“Yes. Even when Gwangwoon acquired AMC, people thought they couldn’t match Emvidia. But since Kangsung is the one dominating the semiconductor market, they ultimately seem to have lost the power struggle there.”

Kangsung and Gwangwoon were practically one body.

When TSNC was controlling the foundry business, they used the power of Gwangwoon’s shipping to dry them out, and eventually conquered even foundry.

“Then targeting Emvidia was a big move. I heard Kangsung intentionally kept reducing semiconductor supply. Also, they supported all available researchers to help AMC quickly improve their technology.”

“It’s not just Kangsung. Even NK, the same Korean company, supported as many research staff as possible, which is how they could quickly catch up to Emvidia.”

“Am I strange? Kangsung’s main business is semiconductors, and NK’s main business is semiconductors too. Yet these two companies cooperate to help AMC?”

Looking at it, it was certainly a strange picture.

No matter how they’re companies from the same country, in an arena where they should be fighting until blood sprays, isn’t cooperating with each other bizarre?

“That’s probably because the power hierarchy is already set.”

“Power hierarchy?”

“Yes. Who is the apex predator, and who controls companies within Korea. It’s all decided.”

“You mean these two major corporations follow Gwangwoon’s instructions?”

“The deep state conspiracy theory is already floating around Wall Street. It seems Korea is already under Gwangwoon’s control. Otherwise, there’s no way those two companies would be crazy enough to share their precious technology.”

Deep state conspiracy theories had always come out.

Rothschild, Rockefeller, Bilderberg Group, etc.

Honestly, until now, they were all dismissed as laughable conspiracy theories.

But the current floating deep state conspiracy theory, at least on Wall Street, was not being laughed off.

“ENIC, which owned Tottenham, tried to play games with Gwangwoon once and got completely crushed. Since then, the atmosphere really feels different. Especially in public settings, they’re trying not to mention Gwangwoon’s name if possible.”

To say ENIC played games was honestly ambiguous.

They just tried to sell what they had at a high price—they didn’t directly harm Gwangwoon.

But daring to try bargaining with them—for just that small offense, they blew up that traditional British investment company.

Everyone felt it there.

This ENIC incident was Gwangwoon sending a warning to all companies.

“The moment anyone plays games with Gwangwoon, they can destroy them… is that it?”

“Everyone probably took it that way. Even our superiors gave separate instructions. To look carefully for any sensitive matters related to Gwangwoon. Especially since Gwangwoon often uses us as a broker.”

What is Gold Reagan?

A financial company ranking in the world’s TOP 3.

Those higher-ups have noses pointed at the sky.

But even they were gradually becoming scared of Gwangwoon’s influence.

“The bigger problem is that there’s a high possibility the main body isn’t Gwangwoon but somewhere else. If Gwangwoon really were a deep state, they wouldn’t be exposing themselves so openly.”

At first, people thought Gwangwoon was the main body.

But as time passed, people started noticing that something was behind Gwangwoon.

Otherwise, Gwangwoon couldn’t be making such bold moves.

But the scary thing was, they couldn’t even get an outline of who was behind Gwangwoon—who the true mastermind was.

“Let’s not try to know too deeply about that. I want to stay in this position as long as possible. And everyone watch your mouths. You know what I mean?”

“Yes. Director.”

The atmosphere became solemn for a moment.

No one knows how far Gwangwoon’s hand extends, or how far their ears are open.

There must definitely be employees acting as Gwangwoon’s ears somewhere in this company.

No one wanted to be harmed by carelessly running their mouth.

“But there is one thing to report about Gwangwoon…”

“What?”

“Since we act as Gwangwoon’s broker, we can roughly know what trades they’re making.”

Since Gwangwoon is strictly a foreign company, to invest in the US market, they must go through a broker.

Unless they create a new platform allowing them to directly invest in foreign markets.

“And?”

“GameStop’s stock rose 15% this time.”

“GameStop? The one with over 140% short-sale ratio?”

“Yes. It started rising suddenly due to a post that kept appearing on a community. The problem is, the one who put money in first before the stock price spiked was Gwangwoon.”

“…What?”

GameStop.

Honestly speaking, it was a junk stock.

A plaything that short-sellers were properly toying with.

But Gwangwoon wasn’t a size to get involved in such a place.

So why suddenly did Gwangwoon put money there?

“How much?”

“1 million dollars.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes. And today they put in another 1 million dollars.”

“…?”

No matter how you look at it, it’s not an amount intended to make money. 1 million dollars is less than pocket change to Gwangwoon.

“The first 1 million dollars did seem to help instigate community members to push it up…”

“But it’s far from enough to make profit.”

“Yes. For a place with Gwangwoon’s scale to do something for profit, this is too small.”

Yet they’re dripping in money little by little.

“What are they up to this time?”

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

The most successful among young people in America was Robinhood.

Declaring completely free commissions and gathering members with this groundbreaking approach, Robinhood was operating its app.

Looking at this, you might wonder where the revenue comes from, but free commissions were actually a global trend. And they’re just not collecting commissions from members—they’re receiving from market makers instead, so it was actually profitable.

Also, they earn interest by utilizing customers’ deposited money, and get profits from other places, so the more members gathered, the bigger the benefit for Robinhood.

And with stock lending, premium subscription services providing research data and analysis, they were making good money, and for Bitcoin, they were collecting commissions diligently.

If they continue like this, they might be able to overtake KW Exchange, which supposedly dominates the Bitcoin market.

No, they definitely will.

“…What? How much did it go up?”

“90% just today.”

“!?”

But something unexpected happened.

“H-how does that make sense? 90% in one day! And how could a junk stock like that…!”

GameStop’s stock price had dropped to 18 dollars.

This was just a month ago.

But now, the stock price had soared to an astonishing 200 dollars.

And it wasn’t even because GameStop made some big profit.

“It first became a topic on the community, but then Mylon Tusk left a strange post on SNS…”

Mylon Tusk.

The person who draws the most attention through SNS in the world.

Also called a con artist of the century.

But that crazy Martian had left a random post about GameStop on SNS this morning and it became a huge topic.

“The GameStop name is spreading not just in America but worldwide, and money is flowing there now.”

“Th-that means what? It’ll go up more tomorrow?”

“Yes. Today it went up 90% in one day, but tomorrow it might go up even higher.”

Robinhood CEO Taines was getting dizzy.

“The biggest problem right now is margin. If the stock price goes up more from here, the margin we have to pay to the clearinghouse will grow exponentially beyond what we can handle.”

The margin that funds and forces shorting GameStop needed to pay was a problem, but the margin Robinhood itself had to pay to the clearinghouse was the biggest problem.

Since the securities firm might not settle customers’ money, clearinghouses collect margin in advance. With GameStop rising nearly 100% a day, clearinghouses were demanding more margin from securities firms.

In other words, hand over collateral.

Securities firms with solid capital would somehow figure it out. But Robinhood didn’t have that kind of capital right now.

“What if tomorrow it really goes up more than 90%?”

“If it goes up another 90% like today, we won’t be able to handle it. We’ve already taken out all emergency loans.”

Everything seemed to be going dark.

How could such a thing happen?

“The real problem is… there’s talk that Gwangwoon is behind this GameStop incident.”

“What? What does that mean?”

“Gwangwoon was the first to put money in before GameStop rose. And isn’t Tusk, who’s conducting World Link in cooperation with Gwangwoon, involved? Right now GameStop keeps getting publicity through SNS.”

Does that mean Gwangwoon is really behind this?

They control SNS after all.

“Th-then did Gwangwoon target us and do this crazy thing…!? Why on earth?”

“Isn’t our Robinhood the biggest competitor threatening KW Exchange?”

Suddenly, it started to make sense why this ridiculous situation occurred.

To kill their biggest competitor, Gwangwoon had made meticulous plans.

“Recently, didn’t we advertise heavily that we’d become #1 even in the Bitcoin market? Perhaps that’s what provoked Gwangwoon…”

Taines broke into a cold sweat.

It seemed he’d plucked the wrong nose hair from a sleeping lion.