Newly Listed Stock
Newly listed stocks are tailor-made for a market operation.
Because the free float is tiny.
From an operator's point of view, scooping up shares and driving the price is never easy. There are never just one or two shares floating around. The older a stock gets, the more long-term holders it accumulates. Shove the price up too hard and profit-taking dumps flood the tape. That is why big operations are rarely simple.
The institutions are going berserk!
Double kill.
A new listing has a limited free float—and you can roughly estimate how limited. Yesterday the institutions dumped about four hundred thousand shares. That left them with maybe a hundred thousand. They were still unloading today.
What mattered was what came after.
The institutions had almost nothing left after the opening dump—and yet the order book kept thrashing.
Even so, the tape stayed lively. Overall volume held high.
Strange.
A new listing that crashed on day one normally rode a straight line down from there. Institutions sold out. Foreigners ignored it. Only retail remained, left to knife each other in the dark.
And still the volume stayed elevated. The only reasonable conclusion was that someone was accumulating on purpose.
Who else would it be? Operators.
Retail alone never produced volume like this. At best they propped up the floor. Operators ran every trick in the book. Even when they camouflaged their tracks, the volume left fingerprints.
I had known it would go this way. I had not been watching 09Lady for nothing.
From an institution's perspective, the name has zero appeal.
Thin capital. An awkward business model. The second it listed, they would cash out and walk. The irony was perfect. The uglier the company, the juicier it looked to operators.
Screech—!
And there was one more reason. One decisive condition that had locked in the buy on 09Lady.
Sora flung the door open and burst in, breathing harder than usual from the rush.
"Hah… hah… hah…"
I had given her the hint. Actually slamming the buy button with conviction was another matter entirely—especially with a junk stock. That was why people still lost money even when you handed them a good name.
"Senior, did you buy 09Lady?"
"I did. Why?"
"You need to go all-in on this one!"
She had grown a little.
Stock prices move on public attention.
The MeToo movement was spreading through society at high speed. Even people who had ignored it at first were starting to look.
Did he try to raw-dog someone at a club and get caught? Holy crap
Sensational headlines pulled the eye. Famous names everyone recognized? Most of it turned out to be fake news—one-sided claims with no evidence. Still the stories kept pouring out. True or false did not matter. They made headlines.
The backlash. Rational people started to worry—and paradoxically, that was the spark that made the whole thing explode.
The government's complacent response poured gasoline on the fire. In the ironic mess of victims creating new victims, the MeToo movement burned hotter still.
"People are going to lose their minds over this, aren't they?"
"Probably."
"No brakes, just flooring the accelerator—you can already see how this ends…"
"Why should I care?"
Oh Seok-hyun answered his subordinate without interest. Literally, it was none of his business.
As long as we make money.
He had already read the political current. A female president. One with a deep interest in women's rights. The sharp jump in the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family's budget said everything. Look at departmental budgets and you could map the government's priorities.
Riding policy was Operation Stock 101. The MeToo controversy that had just detonated would serve as a tailwind—that was his read.
All we have to do is drizzle a little oil.
Spike it every so often. Manufacture volatility. Repeat that enough times and the day traders came swarming.
"Volume is building smoothly."
"This is still the early stage."
"Even now?"
"The news is MeToo all day long. We can push this a lot higher."
The hyenas of the stock market. They would gladly tear into rotten meat if it filled their bellies. Plant the dream and the fantasy that money could be made—and that was where the operation truly began.
You've got to wiggle the bait just right before they chomp down, right?
Early on you might take a small loss. Some would take profit and leave. That was an investment in the future. They would run around bragging and volunteer as free megaphones.
"This stock can go a lot bigger."
"How much?"
"We've got the float locked down. Honestly, we can take it wherever we want."
"Whoa…"
By then the accumulation would be finished. With most of the free float in hand, price control became possible.
As for a reason to rally—just slap one on.
The narrative was good. Attention was pouring in. You could practically stamp "OPERATION STOCK" on the forehead and still make money. That was not enough. High-caliber talent like him had been brought in for a reason. He was going to turn 09Lady into the perfect operation vehicle.
Public issues move stock prices. Saying it out loud was a waste of breath.
Most people just watch the news and move on.
Few investors went to check for themselves. Leaving the house was a hassle—and was there really a reason to bother?
But that was the wrong approach. A real investor, I believed, had to see it with their own eyes and feel it on their skin.
"So that's why you dragged me here?"
"Yeah."
"I really have to see this mess with my own eyes?"
"…"
I had brought Sora with me. The protest site. A place I had felt alone last time.
If you only read the articles, it doesn't even look that serious.
From a rational angle, that was fair. Just punish the actual criminals and be done with it, right?
"MeToo will change the woooorld!"
"A victim's tears are the evidennnce!!"
Listen to them screeching like pigs at slaughter and your opinion shifted whether you wanted it to or not. A cauldron of frenzy. You could feel how sincere they were.
And once interest-group power got that strong—
"It's getting pretty chaotic over there."
"Looks like a lawmaker showed up."
"A-a National Assembly member?!"
"Yeah. Happens all the time at protests."
—people appeared who wanted to use it. The protest leadership was already deep in conversation with men in suits.
You can scream yourself hoarse with righteous fury, but if nobody pays attention it just ends as kids playing dress-up.
Politicians were always the problem. They would sell their souls to the devil for votes. A PC activist's ballot counted the same as anyone else's. To them, these people were voters.
"So that's why the news won't shut up about it."
"You already know what happens when politics gets involved."
"Yeah."
Sora had been through it once herself. Honestly, it was fair to say she had seen just about everything.
Just never got fully broken in.
A stock tangled with politics did not run on reason. Expectation psychology took over. That irrationality—I had told her until my lips wore thin that an investor had to exploit even that.
"That's why I said you had to go all-in."
"You hadn't seen this yet."
"I saw something else, though."
"What?"
"Th-there's a thing."
Sora was the cautious type. Every investor had their own style.
Still—the fact that she placed the bet means she saw something real.
My method could be a reference. It could never be the answer. If she had found her own, that was good fortune.
"Ahem. Ahem. Even to me, it didn't look normal."
"Right."
"Like fanatics, I guess… the way crypto kids used to get."
Their frenzy would only make the MeToo movement grow. It would keep generating social controversy for a long time.
And the more it does, the more support 09Lady's price will get.
Stock prices move on public attention. How high the operators would take it was unknowable, but a rough estimate was possible. Finding a stock like that and betting at the right moment—Sora was starting to look like a real investor.
"What is their problem?"
"I think they're laughing at us…"
"Those women look so goddamn punchable."
But she was not there yet. Becoming a true investor meant trying a lot of things.
The stares were sharp. The women at the protest. To them, we were the enemy.
Men—and pretty women, too.
Sora stood out especially. They were glaring daggers straight at her chest.
"Want to join the protest?"
"Huh?"
"The further MeToo spreads, the higher the stock goes. Those maniacs from Proud Women will go even more feral."
"Is that how it works?"
Then become their allies. Infiltrate their little society and make the MeToo movement spread further.
Not that it really matters that much either way.
She seemed to buy it. She nodded seriously and decided to join the demonstrators.
"Are we actually doing this?"
"You said if it makes money, do anything."
"You're turning into a real maniac yourself."
The investor's path was a rough one.