Real-Time Crash Course in Stocks
Ding-dong~♪
The doorbell.
Pale, slender fingertips pressed it with careful hesitation.
This is… the right place, isn't it?
Sora had arrived at a neighborhood on the outskirts of the university district. It was an undeveloped stretch of town with a reputation for poor security, the kind of place students generally avoided. Still, she had heard that a handful of them — the ones who never managed to snag a dorm room — ended up renting cheap rooms out here and living on their own.
Ding-dong~♪
That damned senior of hers. No — this was also where Chan-uk lived.
It was a dilapidated house, white paint cracked and peeling in long, ugly seams. The kind of place that made you wonder whether anyone actually lived there at all.
Is he even home?
Maybe he really didn't live here. She rang a second time. No sign of anyone coming to the door, no matter how long she waited. Had she gotten the address wrong?
No, this is it…
She wanted to learn stocks. She had laid her feelings bare to Chan-uk and asked him straight.
Go learn from your old man. He's a trader, isn't he?
Her father still treated her like a child. Don't touch stocks until you graduate, if you can help it. He would answer her questions only when she needed academic help. On the subject of actual trading, he told her nothing.
Is this bastard doing this on purpose?
She had swallowed her pride to ask him. But that was her problem, not his. From Chan-uk's point of view, she was a nuisance — and that was putting it kindly. He had every reason to blow her off. He could have given her a fake address on purpose.
You son of a bitch!!
She had thought it was strange how readily he handed over the address. After everything he had said to her before. For all she knew, she was hammering on some random stranger's door — or worse, an empty ruin where nobody lived at all.
When I actually see you, you're dead!
All she could do right now was seethe. He wasn't opening the door, and there wasn't much else she could try. Furious, Sora was just about to turn and leave when —
From inside the house. A man's voice, slightly unhinged. She hadn't misheard. The sound had definitely come from inside.
There can't be that many people this far gone.
Creak!
The doorknob. On a hunch, she tried it — and it turned. Walking in uninvited was rude. But given how things had already gone…
"Gazua~~!!"
She hadn't imagined it. Inside a studio barely seven pyeong wide, that damned senior of hers was screaming at the top of his lungs.
"Sunbae…?"
"What. Fuck off!"
"What am I, a candle? You think I just snuff out?"
She had steeled herself before coming. Of course he might not want to see her. The relationship between the two of them was, to put it mildly, not great.
He doesn't look like he's in his right mind, though?
That wasn't the reason. Sora could tell at a glance. Chan-uk was trading. An HTS window was open on the monitor.
"Gazua!!"
"Go where, exactly?"
She couldn't afford to lose her composure. She needed to understand why he was like this.
"Why the hell are you here."
"You said I could come…"
"You're jinxing me. Get ouuuut!!!"
"Excuse me…???"
There was no room to ask questions. The man in front of her looked completely unhinged.
He was never exactly close to normal to begin with.
The kind of person who belonged locked in a white house on a hill. And whether it was her imagination or not, his eyes looked slightly crossed. Even so, she had to keep her head. This was his private life. He was entitled to his own circumstances.
"If you jinx me and this thing tanks, are you going to take responsibility?"
"This isn't a shaman ritual! What are you even talking about!"
"You're jinxing it, so get out already!"
"Could you at least give me the bare minimum of an explanation?"
Her brow twitched. Sora barely managed to hold down the rage boiling up inside her. There was a reason she had always found this man so thoroughly detestable. What on earth was he thinking?
Is he in the middle of a trade…?
The monitor. HTS. She could see the trading program running on the computer. Maybe he was losing it because she had interrupted a trade. Once she framed it that way, it made a certain amount of sense.
So he bought shares in a company called OurSon Food?
Hoping the price would go up. She understood that much — she had done real investing herself. When a stock fell, your money melted away. You couldn't help but pray for it to rise with everything you had.
"You're invested in OurSon Food, I see."
"So what."
"Would you mind telling me what aspect of the company made you buy it?"
"Dunno."
He dismissed her outright. He didn't so much as glance her way, eyes locked on the order book.
Fine. I never expected this to be easy from the start.
There had to be something she could learn just by looking over his shoulder. She started searching.
Tap, tap!
What kind of company was OurSon Food, exactly — hammering it into her phone.
A meat-related stock…?
Pork, Korean beef, a whole range of livestock operations. In other words, the company's share price rose when meat prices rose.
"There's no news about meat prices going up, though? I haven't noticed anything higher when I go to the supermarket, either…"
"And?"
"So there doesn't seem to be any particular catalyst for the stock to rise."
Of course, she could be wrong. Confirmation bias. She already knew how dangerous it was to approach everything through pure theory — she had been burned once already. But that didn't mean she was ready to give up.
I just don't know yet. If I learn more, study more, I can get a grip on the real picture.
A rational judgment. Even if there were gaps in her reasoning, she didn't think she had said anything outright wrong.
"What the hell have you been going on about."
"I'm saying it's a meat-related stock, right? So I was pointing out that there hasn't been any major move in meat prices."
"Why would this be a meat stock?"
"What? Then what is it?"
"Anyone can see it's a Son Heung-min stock!"
"……."
He was a bigger lunatic than she had imagined. No — this was a line of thinking she hadn't even conceived of.
Son Heung-min? The Son Heung-min I know? The soccer player?
She half-hoped she had misheard. Unfortunately, she hadn't.
"This company is related to Son Heung-min?"
"Our Son! You don't know Our Son? Don't tell me you're one of those dog-dick Ronaldo-sucking milk-bitches?"
"What?"
"I will never understand why anyone rides for that dog-dick milk-tit spray-and-pray Ronaldo."
"I have no idea what you've been talking about this entire time!"
The situation defied comprehension. Even forcing the pieces together got her nowhere.
Wait. Is he just messing with me?
That was the only conclusion Sora could reach. But she couldn't deny the reality in front of her eyes.
"OUR SOOOOOON!!!!"
He was howling like a madman. And he had reason to.
It was rocketing up. Not by one percent or three — by five.
No — in the brief moment she looked away, it had surged straight into an upward VI halt.
"Why is it going up? Could you at least explain…"
"Wait, you didn't know?"
"Know what?"
"Son Heung-min scored yesterday!!"
"……What?"
Her head went blank. She was clearly hearing Korean, but it felt like listening to a language from a country she had never heard of.
"What do you think happens when Son Heung-min scores a goal?"
"I have no idea."
"Son Heung-min theme stocks explode. Isn't that obvious?"
"……."
A strange feeling of almost understanding and completely failing to understand at the same time. The sense that she was being made into an idiot only made her angrier.
This is speculation. This isn't investing.
Of course she knew. Theme stocks. Shares that swung on issues tied to specific people. Political theme stocks were the classic example — if that politician won an election, the price went up. But that wasn't proper stock investing. It was speculative behavior bordering on gambling.
It didn't stop at ten percent. Twelve, thirteen, fifteen! It climbed as if it meant to punch through the ceiling — and then:
It slid right back down. Once again, a price surge that made no sense whatsoever.
Just because Son Heung-min scored a goal, a completely unrelated company's stock goes up? That's absurd.
She had never heard anything about Son Heung-min's father running the company. The names were simply similar. So it would find its way back to where it belonged. She was sure her reasoning was correct — and yet:
The brake held for only a moment. As if nothing had happened, it charged upward again. She tried to reject it in her mind, but —
Her eyes couldn't help but spin. The stock price was rising in real time like something that had lost its mind.
"We live in the age of Son Heung-min. I'm getting emotional."
That surge. In Chan-uk's account, it was turning into blood and flesh. She still couldn't accept it. The idea that a goal by Son Heung-min made a stock go up.
"Even BJs get star balloons when they play well. If Our Son scores overseas and nobody celebrates, wouldn't that be weirder?"
"I-is that how it works?"
"Do you have any idea how many Son Heung-min fans there are worldwide? How many sponsors? Tottenham just bought a hundred thousand shares. We can't lose — Man United's buying too! Chelsea's buying! Nope, not you, Liverpool — mid-table suits you fine."
"Mid-table's… fine?"
"We're hitting the limit up today. Our Soooooon~~!!!"
None of it made sense. And the way he talked was infuriating on top of everything else. Separate from all of that, though —
Is this actually a stock that's going to rise?
She was getting hooked. The steep climb was a fact. It might genuinely hit the limit — the daily maximum of thirty percent.
The person she wanted to take as her teacher. His personality was garbage, but his skill was the real thing. If he had bought, there had to be a reason. Sora decided to take the plunge and put in a buy of her own —
An alert rang out completely out of sync with hers. The sound from the computer made Sora flinch.
"It's going down? You said it went up because he scored."
"What are you talking about. Think about this rationally for a second."
"What?"
"What does OurSon Food have to do with Son Heung-min. If you bought stock believing something like that, that wasn't investing — that was speculation."
……What?
The price was falling. Falling with such unstoppable force that the insane climb from moments ago felt like a lie. The one million won she had put in as a test. In an instant it printed −10%, and a hundred thousand won was gone.
"Hey — sunbae, you clearly said it was going up."
"I did?"
"You said there were so many Son Heung-min fans it would go up? Isn't it rude to Son Heung-min if it doesn't?"
"It's fine. I'm Team Bandwagon."
"What?"
She was about to blow a fuse. At some point he had already cleaned out his own position and was yawning like none of it had anything to do with him.
Is this guy actually insane!!
She had bought because of him. But she was the one who had pressed the buy button. She couldn't even complain. Sora forced herself to swallow it and decided to state the reason she had come here in the first place.
"So why did you come here again?"
"I told you I was coming!"
"Why are you so angry. I don't get why kids these days are always this mad."
"%&#%#$%^#!"
Oh, for fuck's sake!
Somehow even a simple exchange of words was enough to set her blood on fire. But she had no choice. People who were actually good at stocks — outside of her father and her colleagues at the firm, she had never met one in her life. The process made no sense, but he had just made money. By trading stocks.
"You want to know why you lost money?"
"Yes."
"Probably because you're stupid."
"No… that explanation is not satisfactory."
She was valedictorian material, for what it was worth. She took pride in herself. In her entire life, she had never once been called stupid — not even close.
I don't get it.
Even her father, a director at a securities firm, had found out after the fact and called her about it. How did you know in advance that the price was going to drop? If it was pure coincidence, fine. But if there was a reason? If it was simply something she didn't know yet?
"If you can make me understand, I'll do whatever you want."
"Oh."
"Except for nonsense like earlier."
Saying "nonsense" after getting stuck with a hundred-thousand-won loss left a bitter taste in her mouth. Even so, she wanted to know.
"Ah, I hate talking seriously."
"You know how to talk seriously?"
"Yeah. It's different from when I'm in hype mode."
"What?"
Stocks.