Chicken and Egg

A stock price climbing with no end in sight.

.

.

.

At first, there had been doubt.

The stock had already climbed too far, and negative articles kept surfacing. Anxiety was natural.

The more someone fretted, the more they lost.

The stock simply kept rising, shrugging off every piece of bad news. Watching other people rake in money — that relative deprivation only stoked the buying urge further.

And so the investors who bought in stopped thinking the stock is rising and started thinking the stock must rise — exactly like people who have fallen into gambling.

Then the bombshell hit them.

Sonik-jwa.

He had poured a full barrel of gasoline onto the current ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠frenzy. And then he dumped Baekjezen.

Some speculated he was just waiting for a re-entry angle. But no.

He had changed his stance. Liquidated every last share he held. Controversy erupted among investors.

Was Baekjezen truly finished? Or was Sonik-jwa wrong this time?

He had commanded absolute trust in the stock community. Even he couldn't stop this.

Madness.

No one alive could halt the investors who believed in the biotech rally.

People only see what they want to see. Of all the information flooding in, only the pieces classified as "good news" get filed into the brain. And if you go looking, you will always find them — even when they have zero impact on the company's actual value.

Things that would normally mean nothing. A stock that rose while ignoring every red flag was more than enough to blind people's eyes and plug their ears.

Confirmation bias hit its absolute peak.

Chicken and egg.

Which came first is a debate that never ends.

From an evolutionary standpoint, a mutation inside the egg is the more reasonable view.

But you still can't declare it settled. Which is why the argument never finishes — why it never can.

The stock market has its own version.

Does the good news come first, or does the rising stock price come first?

.

.

.

It can feel confusing. Doesn't a stock rise because there's good news? Isn't that the obvious order?

It doesn't work that way.

Human psychology is so thin it gets completely rewritten by hindsight.

Which is exactly why institutions can manipulate prices without a care in the world.

Jack the price up first, then slap on a convenient reason. Or rather — the market invents the reason for you.

Analysts. The one thing they do better than anyone else on earth is play catch-up. They reverse-engineer a process to fit the result — cherry-picking from whatever information is floating around the market.

Partly because the viewers want it that way.

YouTube is ultimately a viewership farm. The entire revenue structure is designed around that. So they invite the analysts most likely to say what the audience wants to hear.

Middle-aged men especially ate this up. There was a reason the nationalist-propaganda channels thrived even while getting roasted.

"You should do that kind of content too. The views multiply on their own."

"I don't want to farm aggro on YouTube."

"Your chest is natural aggro."

"@$#^@$@!"

Sora had come by. She'd already liquidated her entire position a week ago — when the stock was still in the 30,000-won range. Considering it had now broken past 50,000, that was a loss of over thirty percent.

"You sold Baekjezen at 35,000? You a noob?"

"I am a noob."

"Yeah, you are."

That was one way to look at it. Investors who couldn't stand watching from the sidelines bought back in, and the price pumped higher — attaching all kinds of justifications along the way.

Gamblers don't fall in from the start either. There was a time when every one of them was rational. Then somewhere along the line, they lose themselves. Madness is contagious by nature.

"No matter how I look at it, there's a ton of bad news."

"Mm."

"They issued way too much corporate debt, the clinical trial participants don't inspire confidence…"

"Which part?"

"The CEO isn't even from this field to begin with."

Holding onto reason inside that storm was no easy task. You go hunting for nothing but solid information — and the longer you stare at it, the more your mental fortitude collapses. Like standing on a sheet of ice.

For Sora, she'd actually done fairly well.

"People seem insane."

"Brings back memories of Kangwon Land, doesn't it?"

"Yeah……"

"Once someone's eyes roll back, they stop seeing anything else."

Even the people who used to follow me went mad enough to warp their own trading strategies.

Which is exactly why the smartest move is not to touch it at all.

You want to take a modest profit and get out? That's the one thing gambling never allows.

"How have you been able to hold this long, senior?"

"Because I think differently from you."

"Ugh!"

Which is why my bet was on the CEO's management ability — and on the cultish expectations that ability would manufacture.

A good snake-oil salesman moves product, after all.

But you have to be careful. The moment the miracle cure gets exposed for what it is, the public's evaluation flips one hundred and eighty degrees.

You have to approach it with that mindset. Thanks to the concentrated buying pressure from investors, I was able to unload the position. When you've accumulated in the ten-billion-won range, selling is its own ordeal. I dumped every last remaining share.

"Time to sit back and watch the show."

"Watch what?"

"Whether the miracle cure actually has incredible efficacy — the clinical results are about to drop."

"Ah, that's today."

The clinical results. Depending on which way they went, Korea might win a Nobel Prize — or the whole thing might get classified as disposable garbage.

If it succeeds, it'd be entertaining at least.

In my memory, it never won a Nobel Prize in Medicine. But for the shareholders, that was the only thing that mattered. Pure expectation. On the strength of Pexigon alone — a single experimental drug — the market cap had ballooned to ten trillion won. A company drowning in debt with not a single won of revenue had clawed its way to the number-two spot on the KOSDAQ.

It was simply finding its way back to where it belonged.