A Rise Without Reason
A rebound.
A warm breeze was blowing through the stock market.
It was reshaping the psychology of retail investors as well.
Fear was vanishing.
The simple common sense that stocks go up when you buy them was returning.
The way people looked at the market was changing too.
Wasn't everything until now just oversold?
The bad news that had been dominating the market now felt fully pre-reflected.
They had simply been too terrified.
And the people who had been fanning that terror were starting to look different too.
Dr. Doom.
He had been treated as the messiah of the crash.
With the rebound, the evaluation flipped a full hundred and eighty degrees.
He lost the public's trust.
People regretted it late and went hunting for the opposite opinion, but—
Spilled water.
Even if you felt you'd been played, there was no one to take responsibility.
Anger poured out as criticism.
When money was on the line, anyone's eyes went red.
The old-timers already knew.
Famous analysts almost always had black history somewhere.
It was a structure designed so only the rookies got played.
But that realization did not mean anyone had actually learned anything.
<To everyone who held through the bear market — you truly suffered.>
They simply went looking for a different cult leader.
No matter how deep the bear, there was always someone shouting that it would rise.
<Just as Department Head Yeom said, the market is rebounding!>
<Only the people who held through this period get to eat. Anyway, everyone must have suffered a lot mentally — glad it's going up like this.>
No — he had simply been shouting the same thing the whole time.
It only happened to line up with the rebound by coincidence.
Even so, the public cheered.
Because he looked like a pioneer who had predicted the market.
That was how it should have gone, originally.
But lately, among investors, a different expert was drawing the attention.
Sonik-jwa.
He almost never appeared on broadcasts.
But the ripple from a single offhand remark every now and then—
"Whoa, he actually nailed it……."
"Subscribers are going crazy demanding we bring him on."
—was shaking the investor base.
Im Yun-cheol, the PD of 119 Stock Talk, could not hide a complicated feeling.
Sonik-jwa, huh…….
While shooting the show he had met countless experts.
The conclusion he had reached was: take half of what they say.
It always sounded plausible while you were listening.
But once time passed, most of it turned out wrong.
"When we were filming I thought, who even is this guy? Ah, is it rude to say that."
"Thinking that wasn't unreasonable."
Sonik-jwa had been different.
Not only his market calls, but even the image of the experts Yun-cheol thought he knew.
Empty carts make the most noise, they say.
Experts polished their words until they shone.
That was why people kept believing and following them no matter how wrong they were.
Sonik-jwa was the opposite.
He drove it in direct: there is no reason.
Even Yun-cheol had been speechless listening to it at the time.
Gulp.
Looking back, it had been right.
Recently the market was rebounding.
Experts were pouring out interpretations.
Even after carefully weighing them all—
There really isn't a clean "this is it" reason.
Corporate earnings were still projected to fall.
The U.S.–China trade war showed no sign of cooling.
And yet the market was climbing massively.
Climbing so hard you wondered why it had ever fallen in the first place.
"Does Sonik-jwa know the reason?"
"He said he doesn't."
"No, but there has to be some basis for the call, right? Day traders say they trust their gut or whatever……."
"Hmm."
Viewers were curious too.
If investors wanted it, that meant demand existed.
It would help the channel's ratings and buzz as well.
Above all, Yun-cheol himself was curious.
A broadcast appearance.
The best way to raise your profile.
Lately the invitations had dried up completely, though.
At the same time, it was a risky move.
You got what they called "archived" — screenshot-shamed.
What you said was wrong, wasn't it?
The words he had thrown out on the previous appearance had left a wake.
"Hello, Sonik-jwa! It's been a while since we last saw you."
"It has. I thought we might never meet again."
"Haha……."
It had not suited the viewers' palate.
It had not been the crash thesis that was the mainstream at the time either.
No wonder they found it absurd.
And so — cut.
All those appearance offers had stopped after that broadcast.
A little attitude would be fine.
As long as they had called him back into the studio, that is.
"Back then, really…… the crash thesis was the mainstream, wasn't it? And Sonik-jwa, you were one of the people forecasting a decline."
"I was."
"I'm curious what change of heart made you flip your market view!"
That level of tension was what made it fun, too.
Economic shows were too full of old-fogey energy.
The viewers are old fogeys as well, though.
These days there were a lot of dental-implant types.
You needed money to play stocks, after all.
"Simply put, it's because I actually trade stocks."
"What do you mean by that…… could you explain in more detail?"
"Most analysts don't trade their own stocks, do they."
"?!"
He even poked the taboo.
Everyone knew it, but it was so uncomfortable you were not supposed to say it out loud.
It's fucking disgusting, isn't it.
The easiest way to make economic predictions was simply not to hold any stocks yourself.
"Still, economic analysis is a separate matter, so……."
"No. I don't think so."
"And that has no reason either, right? Haha."
"It has a very clear one."
There was nothing to shake your mental state.
If your prediction did not come true, you just diamond-handed until it did.
Just look at Dr. Doom, still screaming crash for two years running.
What if he himself had bought inverse?
For the two years he was bagholding he would have been thinking every wild thought imaginable.
No — if he bought put options like the traders, he could not even hold.
He would go literally broke. Empty can.
"There's bound to be a difference between an investor who feels the market flow on his skin and a spectator watching from way off in the distance."
"Spectator? Everyone can have their own view, so……."
"I think it's funnier when someone who has never made even ten billion with their own stocks starts lecturing about the market economy."
A bomb statement.
If it had been live, the broadcast might have been forcibly cut for that intensity of flavor.
You have to go at least this hard.
It made the reappearance worth it.
They had cut off the invitations after last time; just letting that slide would have been a waste.
"No, no! It's better for the viewers if you give a concrete explanation~. Of course we respect Sonik-jwa's opinion as well."
The host scrambled to clean it up.
He looked like he was scraping by to eat, so Chanuk decided to cut him some slack.
Getting too marked would be inconvenient anyway.
The purpose of appearing on the show.
To raise his own stature.
If he only pulled aggro, the whole point would get inverted.
"I did say there was no reason."
"Ah, yes! And a lot of viewers were curious about that~. Why you didn't give a reason."
"Back then, there really wasn't one."
"Pardon?"
"But now there is."
He also had to show the face of an expert.
Why the market had risen when there was no reason.
Reasons get manufactured anyway, once the market goes up.
The analysts would chatter them out on their own.