Chapter 97

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Translated by Heavenly Cat

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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The Prime Class department wasn’t particularly busy usually.

Other securities teams are worked hard from dawn to night observing market conditions, making reports, and getting investment approval, but there was no need for that here.

Of course, they review materials sent from research and familiarize themselves with everything before reporting to President Jeong Jin-ho.

Also based on that, they do make their own investment reports, but ultimately the one who designs all investment strategies is Jeong Jin-ho.

So should I say their job is leisurely drinking coffee while watching how the market flows and how Jeong Jin-ho’s magic happens this time?

“Deputy Manager Yoon. What I told you earlier? Did you process all the order volume?”

“Yes. Fortunately institutions accepted it. Phew. Really at first they kept refusing so convincing them over the phone was extremely hard.”

“Sorry, but there’s no time to say it’s hard now. Quickly move to the next order. Hurry!”

“Ah, yes!”

Then why does the Prime Class department exist?

Because after President Jeong Jin-ho decides all investment strategies, there need to be people who execute them as is.

Usually it’s a leisurely place, but once work starts, it becomes busier than anywhere else in the world.

Because the amounts handled here are on a different dimension from ordinary securities companies.

“Manager Lee. How much have we processed now?”

“5 trillion won.”

“Oh no. Half still remains? Too slow.”

“I know. Even trying to do it as fast as possible, the amount is so large..”

10 trillion won.

Not 1 trillion won but a whopping 10 trillion won, a tremendous amount.

But instead of spreading that amount across multiple markets, they had to slam it into one place, the French stock market. Of course, even putting it into futures, options, ETFs, etc., there were limits.

No matter how much the French stock market has over double Korea’s market size, it can’t digest 10 trillion won at once.

That’s why it’s complicated.

They must put money in while maximally avoiding the French financial supervisory service’s gaze that’s always monitoring the market, and secure volumes that can handle 10 trillion won.

“Plus for us, speed is life. Why do you think the president pays us high salaries and seats us here? For one important time. Exactly moments like right now. We shouldn’t even say it’s hard. Honestly it’s stranger not to be hard earning that money.”

There are various ways to put 10 trillion won into the market.

The best method is dividing a certain period to slowly inject money.

Buying numerous stocks so 10 trillion won naturally melts in.

But President Jeong Jin-ho doesn’t invest with a long-term perspective.

If he really wants to invest with a long-term perspective, he just buys that company and grows it directly himself. Everything else approaches with short-term profit rates as the goal.

“So we must process it quickly unconditionally. Whether it’s 1 trillion, 10 trillion, or 100 trillion! We just need to somehow shove this money into the French stock market as the president instructed! That’s the only way we can earn our keep. Understood?”

“Yes!”

Once work starts, not even 1 second can be wasted here.

President Jeong Jin-ho’s time and other people’s time have different value.

Because President Jeong Jin-ho’s investment method is exactly where even being late by 1 second can lose hundreds or thousands of billions.

“Now. What’s our team motto?”

“Abandon the ego!”

“Okay. Everyone move!”

Like that, after encouraging team members today too, Manager Seo picked up the receiver again.

Because he must press institutions not releasing volumes needed for short selling to achieve the target President Jeong Jin-ho wants.

‘But can this really all be processed?’

Honestly after the 2 trillion won short-term hit-and-run incident, he thought there’d be nothing more to be surprised about, but he doesn’t know where this madness to do massive shorting with 10 trillion won comes from.

Realistically, is processing that much volume in a short period possible?

But he knew one thing for certain.

Until now, President Jeong Jin-ho absolutely never ordered impossible things.

***

“Wow…”

“Should I say it’s really intense…”

We were watching fires through the TV in the conference room today.

Because the Yellow Vest protest that erupted in France spread like wildfire.

Then normally we’d think they’d protest hard holding pickets and megaphones, but France is a little, no, very different from our common sense.

“Don’t they first set fires before starting protests there?”

“Isn’t that framing?”

“I also thought so, but seeing that, it seems real.”

Our country too at its peak, when protesters and police clashed they’d overturn buses and spray water, etc., it was quite brutal, but compared to the scene we’re seeing now, that seemed mild.

Stores on streets were being robbed, even set on fire.

How should I say it?

Like using protests as an excuse to open a lawless zone?

As if waiting only for today, protesters rose like rioters destroying streets. Bloodshed was occurring as they clashed with police trying to stop them.

“The number attending initial protests was about 200,000, but now that number exceeded 500,000, and next week it seems it’ll exceed 1 million.”

“It’s spreading frighteningly.”

“Yes. Especially because of posts and videos encouraging protest participation through our PicPic and Faceweb, the protest size seems to have grown much larger.”

The French government also looked quite flustered.

Although Europe is a place that protests at every opportunity, they didn’t expect so many hundreds of thousands of people to gather this rapidly.

“Including Faceweb, there’s talk that NewTube also saw this as an opportunity and intentionally exposed videos encouraging protests to all members.”

“What about our PicPic?”

“We didn’t intentionally order it to be that way. But protest-related videos were briefly heavily exposed by the algorithm. But after that, Faceweb set fire again, and that came over to our side and kept cycling.”

So to summarize, our PicPic didn’t intend that, but Faceweb received that toss and spiked it, entangling us together?

“We became partners unintentionally?”

“Yes. Especially since our PicPic is currently France’s most popular SNS app, if protest-related videos hadn’t spread through SNS, the protest would’ve ended initially.”

But now for a week, frenzied protesters are rioting, and this phenomenon was spreading throughout the city.

“Initially they seemed to try peaceful protests, but the problem is forces opposing the current ruling party joined in seeing this as an opportunity. That’s when radicalization started.”

My heart felt uncomfortable.

Even though I didn’t put pressure on PicPic to deliberately make such videos go out, wasn’t feeling guilt natural as a person?

They say people doing business especially shouldn’t lean toward emotions.

It seemed like talk distant from me.

But.

Shouldn’t I do what needs doing?

“The stocks we bought?”

“As you expected, President. When the protest first opened, French securities had almost no volatility. Just like other markets.”

Currently all world markets froze.

With financial crises bursting consecutively, everyone wasn’t moving money.

“But as protests gradually intensified, French securities also started shaking greatly. People also realized it’s on a different dimension from protests that happened until now. Because talk is coming out that going like this, it’ll be the largest scale since the 1960s.”

As a result, French securities were experiencing a downtrend.

Despite global markets being frozen, French securities were fluctuating.

And we injected all 10 trillion won taking positions entirely in shorts.

I selected stocks as intuition came and threw them to team members, but I wondered how they could digest all that volume, and they actually did it.

“It’s really fascinating. When you told us to put all 10 trillion won in shorts, honestly I thought it’d be impossible. If taking short positions long-term maybe, but I thought doing so short-term was really impossible.”

“But doing it, it really worked.”

Thanks to that, every time securities shook, we were making much money.

“The problem is selling timing. Since the amount in the market transcends imagination, putting all this in was hard, but taking it out might be harder.”

So I too was gauging timing.

Exactly where is the bottom?

People appearing in The Big Short, an investment movie based on true stories, also knew stocks would fall much more, but deliberately sold in the middle.

Because if they went down more from here, companies and institutions would shout hooray and go bankrupt with stocks becoming complete waste paper.

But I didn’t need to worry about such things.

Because I have abilities I alone have that others don’t, that others don’t know.

“…”

I brought my hand to stocks listed on the list.

Some gave signals, others gave no signals.

My intuition seemed to tell me which stocks I should settle right now.

“Please dispose of everything checked here. Space them over several days so as not to shock the market.”

“Ah, yes. I’ll move immediately.”

I stopped team members moving after receiving instructions.

“Please tell PicPic. To take down all provocative protest videos going up now. Also please have them take down everything encouraging violent protests.”

“Um.. President. If we take all those down, spreading protests might soften. Then securities might also normalize..”

“Though we’re making money by shorting, I don’t want to justify and incite such violent things.”

“Yes. President, I understand well.”

After team members left, I exhaled shortly.

The somewhat heavy heart seemed to improve, but it was still stuffy.

“..Should I try donating.”

***

The Élysée Palace, the French president’s official residence and office, had a funeral home atmosphere now.

Protesters grown uncontrollably set fires in various parts of the city, and police forces were being deployed daily to stop it.

Thousands of people were injured as both sides clashed in those intense protests.

Just turning on news, videos of protesters and police clashing came out all day.

“What are protesters’ conditions?”

“To completely withdraw the policies we’re pushing this time. From fuel tax increases to even rich tax cuts.”

“There’s also a condition telling me to resign?”

“Ignore that. It’s the work of opposition forces trying to oust you as president using this protest as pretext. But.. We must consider withdrawing this policy including fuel taxes.”

He never knew crowds would rise up to this extent.

He thought they’d whine a few days then quit.

“Completely withdrawing this policy would include digital tax too?”

“Yes. OTTs like NewTube and Nflix announced they’d all raise subscription fees if digital tax is forcibly implemented. NewTube also plans to sharply raise premium costs maintained at cheap prices before.”

“Not only that, but talk is going around that Faceweb and PicPic might seriously withdraw from France.”

President Péron bit his teeth hard.

Actually there was no reason for protests to intensify this much.

But those bastards united to corner the French government.

Creating the frame that Péron is the rich’s president with false videos and all kinds of rumors, even causing fierce protests!

“But since this policy being for domestic rich is somewhat true..”

“That’s not important. Who incited those crowds is important. We can withdraw everything else but absolutely can’t cancel swinging the hammer at those bastards.”

“Still, wouldn’t it be good to resolve it as well as possible? Securities are fluctuating too much so even domestic companies supporting us initially are now raising opposing voices.”

Rich people who were strongly supporting President Péron initially also turned back to opposition when their wealth started being threatened.

As expected, trusting those bastards wasn’t right.

“But President. Strange rumors are circulating in financial markets now.”

“Rumors?”

“Yes. Before protests started, money amounting to several billion euros flowed in from outside. All hitting short sales at once too.”

“Several billion euros?”

“Yes. Estimated at about 6 billion euros.”

“What?! 6 billion?! At that level, isn’t it market disruption?”

“The problem is they didn’t lump it in one place but put it into major corporations and various companies, supposedly not shocking the market as much as possible..”

Then something suddenly flashed through President Péron’s head.

“Could this also be connected to that Gwangwoon?”

“Yes. Since we didn’t investigate, it’s not certain, but according to circulating rumors, yes.”

Péron eventually hit the table hard.

“I knew it. These bastards joined hands and bet money first before bursting things.”

Though still only circumstantial evidence, it’s fine.

If he could just start an investigation with presidential authority and thoroughly shake out those bastards, it didn’t matter. So he tried to give orders immediately, but advisors came forward dissuading Péron.

“President. You must think calmly.”

“Calmly? Do I look calm now?”

“Just now PicPic took down all videos related to this protest.”

“..What?”

Those bastards leading more than anyone in provoking protesters and inciting people, suddenly?

“As PicPic suddenly started taking down all videos, Faceweb and NewTube sides are also sneakily lowering exposure.”

“Why?”

“Aren’t they sending a message to our government now? Since they showed their power all they could show, let’s stop here now.”

Only then did Péron also realize that intention.

“So act like nothing happened?”

“Yes. If you just completely withdraw digital tax, they mean they won’t incite anymore either.”

Absurd laughter came out from being dumbfounded.

Have you seen such shameless bastards?

“President. You must negotiate with them.”

“Is there such one-sided negotiation? This is us raising white flags and surrendering!”

“But.. If we antagonize them here, they’ll definitely plaster videos everywhere again, and the protesters approaching 1 million now might increase to 2 million.”

“…”

Péron swallowed dry saliva.

He really feels how the world changed.

When he first became president, he felt like he held this France under his feet, but actually there was someone above that.

True power isn’t in government, but now with those who know how to touch crowd psychology while sucking out money.

Gwangwoon even sent a clear message.

That if he crosses the line more from here, they’ll really turn all of Paris into hell fire.

“You must make a decision now.”

A decision.

“Is there anything to decide or not decide?”

The answer was already determined.