The Dead Investor's Journey
"When do you think a person dies?"
It's a famous line from the twentieth-century classic One Piece.
Worth thinking about at least once.
"When a bullet buries itself deep in your heart? Not a chance!"
"……."
"When you're struck with an incurable disease? Not a chance!"
"……."
Death is never far away.
Everyone meets it eventually.
Even if you never drink a stupid deer's poison-mushroom soup.
People die in all kinds of ways.
Which is why the author said it happens when the world forgets you.
For an investor, though, the rule works a little differently.
"It's when you're stuck holding a stock."
"Just shut up……."
First visit to Sora's place in a while.
She was exactly as deflated as she'd promised over chat.
Get stuck holding, and you start wishing you were dead.
She'd gotten out of Osung Electronics, she said.
The way she'd bragged about it over KakaoTalk, you'd have thought she'd conquered the market.
But that wasn't the end.
She still had no idea why a bear market was truly terrifying.
"I don't get it."
"You never got anything to begin with."
"Ugh!"
She'd probably managed it as best she could.
She'd learned a few things from the last downturn, too.
So of course she thought she'd nail it next time.
A bear market is a crisis and an opportunity at once.
A chance to buy low.
Catch the bottom cleanly, and you can bank serious short-term gains—
but only if it were that easy.
If it were easy, every dog and every Sora would be rich.
The market is not that forgiving.
"It doesn't make sense. There's still such a thing as a fair price, no matter what."
"And you calculate that with what, exactly?"
"Operating profit, or whatever."
"Sigh~."
Surely it couldn't fall further from here?
It could. That was the whole point.
Corporate value plus alpha was at work.
Fear.
Buy when there's blood in the streets!
It wasn't that simple a slogan.
Fear hit the share price directly.
2018/02/18 — ₩12.1173 trillion
2018/02/19 — ₩11.9855 trillion
2018/02/20 — ₩11.6974 trillion
2018/02/21 — ₩12.0078 trillion
"What's this?"
"Trading value."
"Yeah, I can see that……."
The total amount of stocks bought and sold.
Through January it had been brushing ₩15 trillion.
Now, late February, it was hovering around ₩12 trillion.
It's the metric that tells you how alive the market really is.
In a bull run you can ignore it.
In a bear market you check it without fail.
"The ultimate goal of the Illicit Stock Manipulators is to choke this volume down."
"Okay, but why?"
"Because when volume dries up, prices have nowhere to go but down."
"?!"
A little or a lot—that was the only difference.
Share prices always carried a basic layer of froth.
It's money chasing money, after all.
The heavier the volume, the easier the froth sticks on.
Because there are that many people buying.
Starve the volume?
And you can push the price down with near certainty.
That was why the bad-news articles always bloomed in a bear market.
They killed retail's appetite for buying.
Corporate value? Meaningless. They just murder the investment psychology outright.
That was the real reason a bear market was terrifying.
You could never fight it with rational thinking alone.
"But still."
"King-but?"
"The Osung Biologics you bought went up……."
Of course there were exceptions.
Sora puffed out her cheeks, lips sticking out in a full pout.
She'd dug her heels in again, no doubt.
She didn't want to just copy me.
She couldn't see a reason that satisfied her on her own.
Fair enough—it was a bear market.
If you were going to buy, you wanted something that had already fallen further.
"That's why stocks are hard."
"Did you come here just to mess with me?"
"No. Not stocks in general—Korean stocks."
"?"
Up to this point, it was just froth deflating.
If sentiment came back, prices would climb again.
If that were how it worked, ninety-five percent of retail wouldn't lose money.
When the bull returns, things rise.
The way a normal stock market is supposed to work.
In Hell Joseon—in Korea—you did not get to expect that.
Adults had a saying about stocks.
"You've heard it, right? Play the market and you'll ruin your family."
"My dad was a trader."
"Ah. Right."
It was the line everyone heard.
In Korea, stocks were treated as the same class of vice as gambling.
And that line came from experience.
Because investing used to be harder?
Even allowing for that, ninety-five percent was still too high.
"You heard what was wrong with Osung Electronics, didn't you?"
"Yeah, more or less……."
"Back in the day, that kind of thing was business as usual."
"?!"
Making money in stocks is hard. Not losing it isn't—
as long as you just hold long enough.
By the time you get it back, inflation has usually gutted you, but still.
Korea was the exception.
Governance reshuffles and CEOs funneling contracts to affiliates made prices move in ways that made no sense.
The good companies got hollowed out from the inside.
Retail got absolutely wrecked by it.
"Blowing up on junk tickers is on you. But when even value investing looks like that, losses are basically guaranteed."
"Ah……."
"That's why Osung Biologics reacts so sharply."
"Okay, I get it!"
She finally seemed to understand.
Even a complete idiot would catch the hint after that much explanation.
Stocks take skill, sure—but experience matters even more.
That whole history of the Korean market.
The Domestic Financial Institutions knew it cold, which was exactly why they were buying.
Who knew—it might outrun Osung Electronics later!
If the group shoved it forward in the open, it was possible.
"So Osung Electronics just becomes an empty shell?"
"Not that far. They can't do it as blatantly as they used to."
You heard the story every so often.
If only I'd bought Osung Electronics twenty years ago……
Pure fantasy, basically.
The market had regulations now.
Information spread fast over the internet.
Even so, almost nobody had seen Osung Biologics' surge coming.
In the old days it all happened without a mouse or a bird noticing.
"Korea's bear markets are fucking hard. This is not a market someone like you can handle."
"Then—"
"What."
"You could've taught me from the start."
"Yeah, but this way's more fun."
"You fucking bastard!"
Historical facts like these.
Knowing them and actually using them were completely different skills.
Nothing beats learning with your body.
That was how it stuck.
It taught you that you paid for lessons in flesh.
Squelch—
Slap. Slap. Slap.
I was getting a handjob from Sora.
Lying back on the bed while she worked me—that was pure paradise.
If Sora opened a handjob parlor, it'd print money.
She was definitely better at this than at stocks.
She was wasting her real talent.
"Just take allowance from Oppa. What's with the stocks."
"Ugh!"
Even the smell was good.
The blanket and pillow were soaked through with her scent.
This is why you end up doing Yass at your girlfriend's place.
Twice as turned on.
In the quiet room, only her breathing and the wet slap of her hand filled the air.
Slap. Slap. Slap.
One hand locked around the shaft; the other twisted over the head.
The first load came out fast.
"Hah~ that was good."
"……."
"Rest a bit and go again. Sora? Sora?"
My oversensitive cock was still twitching with aftershocks.
She grabbed it hard enough to hurt—
Ghk—!
—and forced it back up.
Blood rushed in whether I wanted it or not, and I went rock hard again.
"I said take a break for a second?"
"Just come."
"Ah♡"
The service was excessive.
Looks like the handjob-parlor big sister had had a rough day.
Slap. Slap. Slap.
Hand stimulation hit hard.
Especially when she was rubbing with both hands.
"Wiping it up every time is annoying, so I'll just dump it in a cup."
"Twice is enou—"
"Shut up."
It came out almost immediately.
She squeezed the load into an empty water glass sitting beside the bed.
Slap. Slap. Slap.
Squelch—
And then more handjob.
Kissing while she ground against me, there was no way I was staying soft.
"Why are you doing this……."
"Because it's fun."
She kept milking me out.
I tried to resist, but she had a death grip on the goods.
Slap. Slap. Slap.
Throb—
She only stopped when I physically could not get hard again.
The glass was sloshing full.
"This used to be my favorite cup. Now I can never drink out of it again."
"That's what you're worried about……?"
"From now on, teach me properly."
She toyed with my limp cock.
Part of it was anger at being teased—
but she really does seem to enjoy this.
Talent plus actual fun. She'd make a hell of an ace at a handjob parlor.
"I can't even trade for a while now."
"Because you're stuck?"
"What else am I supposed to do."
Stuck holding.
If you knew it was going lower, you could act decisively.
In a bear market, that's the hard part.
The price was already undervalued.
Nobody knew when it would bounce.
And nothing shattered your psyche like selling—only to watch it rip higher the second you were out.
Which was why I'd said it.
"You met your death as an investor."
"Your dick's the one that died, sunbae."
"Stop—stop, aaah♡"
She stuck a finger up and gently scraped along the urethra.
Honestly, maybe she was the only one who hadn't gotten anything out of this.
Anyway.
There were moments like that.
When you couldn't do a single thing.
Calling it an investor's death wasn't an exaggeration.
If it kept sliding from there, you went broke.
But knowing Sora's style, the market would hand her an exit eventually.
"You think so?"
"That stretch might last a very long time, though."
"Ugh……."
"That's why investing young is good."
You get a lot of coins.
Not Bitcoin—attempts. Lives to spend.
Once you're older, you can't afford them.
Your whole life is on the line by then.
You had to learn a lot while you were still young.
"Exploring the world and widening your horizons isn't a bad idea either."
"Like when we went to Sokcho?"
"Overseas."
"Whoa! An overseas trip."
I could teach her that much.
Whether Sora became a trader or a handjob-parlor ace, she'd pull it off either way.
Ideally both.
Anyone who came back from a real trip changed.
It was a chance to punch straight through that clogged-up stubbornness of hers.