Chapter 128

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Translated by Heavenly Cat

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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On ordinary days, our department employees come to work in the morning and leave in the afternoon.

But on days with issues, they come in the morning and can’t leave until the middle of the night, stuck at the company.

“Wow… I-is this really possible?”

“How much is it going up?”

But there was no sign of fatigue.

Everyone was just staring at the monitors as if in awe.

“Yesterday it went up nearly 90%. But today it already broke through 90% to 111%!?”

“There’s no one selling, only people buying. This might actually break 130% today if things go well.”

Just a short while ago, GameStop’s stock price was only 20 dollars.

But with the community’s firepower, plus Mylon Tusk leaving an SNS post about GameStop, it properly drew aggro.

People were flocking from not just America but overseas.

Didn’t the time spent at home increase due to corona?

They were already bored, and this was perfect. Targeting the whole world!

“Already broke through 300 dollars…”

“Ah. What a shame. Maybe we should have put in more than 3 million dollars.”

I had put in exactly 3 million dollars.

1 million dollars per day, watching for a total of 3 days.

But it had already exceeded 30 million dollars. Over 10x profit.

If I had put in more money, I would have made even bigger profits.

But my intuition only let me put in this much.

“President. This… seems like it’ll go up more, doesn’t it? Should we put in more money now?”

Yesterday alone it went up 90%, and now it’s past 111% racing toward 120%.

So I checked periodically if I should put in more money, but my intuition didn’t react.

“No. I don’t think we need to put in more.”

Having it put in only 3 million dollars meant making money wasn’t the purpose.

Then why did it make me put money here?

“Perhaps you think it’ll drop from here, President?”

“But no matter how I look at it, there’s no sign of it dropping. Just look at the buy wall here—it’s enormous. It’ll easily pass 120% and enter 130% in an instant. It might even hit 200% in just today.”

Looking at it myself, the upward momentum was no joke.

The rise was partly due to people’s attention being drawn, but the short squeeze effect was also big.

“The short-sellers missed their timing to get out. They thought it would briefly spike and drop, but they never imagined Mylon Tusk would join in there.”

Mylon Tusk despises short-sellers.

Weren’t short-sellers the ones who had always tormented his company?

So in my view, he seemed to have joined in with intention.

No, there had to be deliberate intention from the start, since the reason GameStop became a topic on the community was because of the excessive pileup of short-sellers.

“The biggest problem that erupted is apparently Melvin Capital. Also, various hedge funds have money in here.”

Short selling is a system where you borrow stock to sell, then buy back the stock at a lower price later to repay. The current short-sellers can be seen as coming in targeting such price differences.

But as the stock suddenly rocketed, they couldn’t respond in time either.

Also, they seemed to believe it would briefly rise and find its place again.

But unfortunately, GameStop was only going up. It looked like it had absolutely no intention of going down.

So what happens to the short-sellers?

Unable to handle the enormously growing margin requirements, they start quickly liquidating positions, and prices rise along with it.

This is a short squeeze.

“But over 140% was shorted here, right? As those volumes poured out all at once, prices inflated even more.”

If short-sale ratio is just 50%, if a short squeeze happens, it’s called a disaster.

But a short squeeze with 140% ratio—this was a catastrophe.

“So you think the stock price will keep rising?”

“Yes. Looking at this now, anyone can see this is a situation where the stock price can only keep rising.”

I brought my hand to the GameStop stock.

“!?”

Then, a very powerful shock like lightning striking hit me and passed through.

The intensity was so strong that my mind went blank.

“President…?”

“What’s the possibility of GameStop suddenly dropping?”

“Pardon? Ah… could there honestly be such a sudden drop?”

While everyone was tilting their heads, Hye-rin cautiously spoke up.

“There’s exactly one possibility.”

“What is it?”

“The securities firms block trading altogether.”

“Circuit breaker?”

“No. That can’t stop it. Literally blocking trading for just the GameStop stock.”

“…Is that even possible? That means not the commission blocking it, but the securities firm itself blocking it?”

In other words, it’s something that doesn’t make sense.

While the commission occasionally blocks things, a securities firm intentionally blocking stock trading to drop the price has never once happened.

“That’s exactly my point. To make that price drop right now, something absurd like that would have to happen. Even if they block the stock trading, once it opens again, it’ll rise again.”

“So it keeps going up then.”

“Yes. But rumors are spreading in the community too. Right now Robinhood is the most used securities app in America, right? The problem is they’re pushing a free commission system, and because of this, Robinhood might now face financial difficulties.”

Robinhood brought in the groundbreaking free commission system and gathered many members in a short time.

This was because they used the PFOF system.

Instead of taking commissions from customers, they used a method of selling customer orders to market makers.

When the market is stable and predictable, this method is highly efficient.

But when abnormal volatility and trading volume like GameStop occur, Robinhood has to pay astronomical margin to the clearinghouse.

“Could they possibly block trading because they can’t pay the margin?”

“The margin scale is becoming too large. But… it’s too unlikely a story.”

“Right. Try blocking trading and see. How are they going to handle the aftermath?”

I too thought such a thing would absolutely never happen.

But the powerful thrill I just felt from GameStop.

It was like a feeling of being shocked at an appalling situation.

If that’s the case…

Nah, no way.

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

“…How did it go?”

“Closed at 134%.”

Taines’s face had halved in just a few days.

But that wasn’t just Taines. All the executives here were similar.

“Margin?”

“We managed to fill it with emergency loans… But the problem is we didn’t pay all the margin. We negotiated with the clearinghouse for more time, but if tomorrow it skyrockets like today…”

No need to continue.

Not paying margin means declaring default, and that day Robinhood’s trading stops.

In other words, all customers registered with Robinhood would also have their trading stopped.

“How did it come to this?”

Robinhood was honestly wronged too.

If not for GameStop, they wouldn’t have been cornered this badly.

“It seems the free commissions ended up tripping us. If not for that…”

“Are you blaming me right now? Because we went with fully free commissions, our Robinhood achieved explosive growth.”

But as they say, those who live by the sword die by the sword.

They prospered with free commissions, but ultimately that system put Robinhood in a default crisis. If they hadn’t done free commissions like other securities firms, they wouldn’t be shaken this badly.

“Our system isn’t the problem. It’s just that we exposed our weakness too well to the enemy.”

“Enemy?”

“I mean Gwangwoon. They’re using Mylon Tusk, SNS, and the community to instigate everyone to jump into GameStop and pump the price, aren’t they? They knew. That if the stock price skyrockets this much in a short time, it would deal critical damage to our Robinhood.”

The irrational happening isn’t coincidence.

There’s a very high possibility it’s someone’s intention.

And this was clearly a setup.

Their purpose wasn’t to kill the short-sellers riding on GameStop.

The target they were aiming at was one.

Right here—Robinhood.

“These vicious bastards…! How could they go this far!”

“Gwangwoon’s name is famous on Wall Street. If someone doesn’t follow their will, or doesn’t align with them, they ruthlessly crush them regardless of who they are.”

He had heard of the notoriety they’d built up until now.

But actually experiencing it, they were far more terrifying than he’d heard.

“What on earth do they want from us that they’re scheming like this?”

“Don’t they probably want our Robinhood to disappear? We’re actually threatening their territory after all.”

It was unfair.

So unfair he felt like he’d go crazy.

But there was nowhere to appeal this unfairness.

In a survival-of-the-fittest world, exposing his weakness was Taines’s mistake.

Right now, the problem wasn’t identifying who schemed this, but the margin they had to pay immediately.

“The clearinghouse seems to know our situation and said they’d give us more grace period. But even they say if the stock price goes up more from here, there’s no way…”

“Then what do you want us to do? Stop trading?”

“…”

A strange atmosphere flowed through the meeting room.

“W-wait, what is everyone thinking right now?”

“CEO. Perhaps that might be the best option.”

“You’re really telling me to block trading?!”

“Blocking trading completely won’t be effective. Even if we block it, once it opens again, they’ll push it up.”

“Then…”

“Block buying entirely. Only leave selling open. That way, everyone will panic and hit sell, won’t they?”

Taines blinked.

Is everyone saying this seriously?

“What do you think will happen if we do that! People who got damaged will file lawsuits!”

“That’s why we need to assemble the legal team right now. There’s somewhat logical reasoning too. If we declare default, the aftermath will spread to other securities firms, and the financial market will collapse like dominoes. A major securities firm like us falling is the same as a second Lehman Brothers incident.”

They could appeal that they had no choice but to remove the buy button to prevent such a thing.

“There will be lawsuits, but we can just drag out the fight. Most are individual investors anyway, aren’t they? If we assemble a good legal team, the courts will adjust the amount well.”

“We’ll definitely get hit with fines too, right?”

“But the company won’t go bankrupt. We can keep operating.”

Blocking people from buying.

No matter how he thought about it, it was an unprecedented, absurd alternative.

“What about Gwangwoon and Mylon Tusk? What if those bastards don’t stay quiet?”

“They’ve achieved their purpose anyway. Gwangwoon succeeded in suppressing our influence, and Mylon Tusk killed the short-sellers like he wanted. They probably won’t care about lawsuits. They won’t want to spend money on pointless things. They obviously know how it’ll turn out.”

Gwangwoon, and Tusk.

If not for those bastards, things wouldn’t have gotten this bad.

He wanted to go find them and throw punches right now, but he regrettably couldn’t.

But next time, he would definitely repay this humiliation.

“Hoo…”

Taines fell into thought briefly.

But his deliberation wasn’t very long.

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

GameStop, which had continued an astonishing rise of 134% in just one day.

With predictions that it could go 200% the next day, and with the firepower of more and more people gathering, perhaps Robinhood got scared.

“I’ve lived a long time but I’ve never seen anyone remove the buy button. Is this really something that can happen in the 21st century? Isn’t that America? They’re not getting shot?”

An unprecedented event in financial history occurred.

As the market opened and GameStop’s stock price started rising, suddenly Robinhood removed the buy button.

In other words, only selling was possible.

If they had stopped trading entirely, the damage would have been less. But because they only left the sell button alive, panic selling erupted everywhere.

“The damage amount must be enormous, right?”

“Yes. It went up to 483 dollars and dropped to 112 dollars. 26 billion dollars vanished in an instant.”

26 trillion won disappeared in just a few hours.

Naturally, investors’ fury was piercing the sky, and Robinhood wasn’t even responding.

“But you also put money in there, didn’t you? 3 million dollars.”

“Yes. But since we put in at 20 dollars, we haven’t taken a loss. Not yet.”

“Right. I was a bit curious when I heard that report. Why you put in only 3 million dollars there.”

Actually, I still hadn’t figured out why my intuition made me put 3 million dollars there.

“But when this incident broke, I immediately knew. What you were waiting for was exactly this moment, right?”

“…?”

“3 million dollars is kind of an ambiguous amount for our Gwangwoon’s scale. It doesn’t look like speculation. It’s hard to see as involvement in price manipulation either. And then the biggest competitor to our KW Exchange, Robinhood, causes this major incident.”

My hyung continued speaking very enjoyably.

“Isn’t this exactly a clear justification for us to get involved? We take on the lawsuit on behalf of investors.”

That’s when intuition shook my entire body.

This was it.

“…As expected, the only one who understands my heart at once is you, Chairman.”

“Hahaha. Of course. What relationship do we have?”

If I hadn’t put money in GameStop, I’d have no justification to intervene in this incident.

But right now, I’m also a shareholder who put money into GameStop.

“That’s why I brought this person today. Did you meet before?”

“Ah, yes. Executive Director Kim Jae-hyun, right?”

“Yes. President, thank you for remembering me.”

It was Executive Director Kim who heads the newly established legal team at our Gwangwoon.

“The Chairman poured an enormous amount of funds into the legal team, so at least in our country, no company can match our team.”

“Does that mean overseas lawsuits are possible too?”

“Yes. We’re already in contact with major overseas law firms. We plan to gather all investors who were harmed by this GameStop incident and Gwangwoon will proceed with the lawsuit as their representative.”

“Then it’ll definitely draw attention. This time KW Exchange got approved to trade US stocks too, so couldn’t we pull over members from Robinhood to our side?”

In other words, open a major lawsuit this time and enjoy proper publicity effects.

It wasn’t a bad proposal, so my intuition reacted this time too.

“What remains now is the lawsuit scale. How much we make Robinhood cough up.”

“How much are you thinking?”

“Realistically speaking… it’ll probably end at tens of millions of dollars. Since they’re not going to assemble a sloppy legal team either, the court will probably adjust the amount…”

While Executive Director Kim was speaking, I quietly wrote an amount in my personal notebook.

But the amount kept going up.

Uh-oh. How high is it going?

Then the pen stopped at one place.

Seeing that amount, I surprised myself and muttered without realizing.

“100 trillion?”

Then Executive Director Kim and my hyung looked at me.

“…Pardon? 1-100 trillion? You mean the lawsuit amount should be 100 billion dollars…”

Then my hyung next to me burst out laughing.

“I told you, Executive Kim. Our President Jeong’s scale is no joke.”

“B-but Chairman. 100 trillion is an impossible amount. The courts will absolutely never rule that way either.”

“Well, we can still try poking. It’ll definitely draw attention. Hahaha.”

My hyung patted Executive Director Kim’s back.

“…”

I sent an awkward smile to the director who was staring at me with blank eyes.