Re: Investor Life Starting from Zero
Stocks.
The act of buying and selling a company’s future value.
In truth, stocks are exactly what ordinary people imagine them to be.
A company takes the capital invested by its shareholders and pours it into expanding the business. In return, it hands those shareholders profits under the name of a rising share price.
It simply doesn’t work that way in Korea.
Korea is the country that has developed at the fastest speed on the planet. Strip away the nationalistic chest-thumping and that is a plain statement of fact.
It goes further still.
A handful of nations have posted rapid GDP growth, yet Korea is the only one that has crossed the wall of democratization—the barrier experts once called an absolute ceiling for entry into the developed world. The consensus among those same experts is that it will remain the only one.
So the body has grown large enough to stand beside the great powers.
“Institutionally, though, we’re still a developing country. That’s the reality. Ever heard people call Korea the land of scams? Our public-safety ranking is among the highest in the world, which is weird, right? All of that weirdness is happening in the economic sphere.”
“…….”
The mind is still taking its first baby steps.
More precisely, the leftover habits of the developing-nation era have never fully died.
Developing countries loosen legal regulations so the economy can fire up fast.
The point is to let entrepreneurs expand without constantly looking over their shoulders. During the growth years that approach was correct. But it is something that should have faded as the times changed. The era simply raced past too quickly for the old habits to disappear.
“The chaebols being too powerful is part of it too. Bottom line: when you buy a stock, the most important thing is figuring out whether the company president is a crook or not.”
“…….”
“Answer?”
“Leave me alone.”
That reality still shapes the market today. There are simply too many crooks sitting in the CEO’s chair.
Really.
The scale is beyond anything ordinary people picture. That is how the so-called manipulated stocks come into existence.
Sharak—
The physiognomy list Sora had brought. True to her analog sensibilities, she had written every entry out by hand on actual paper.
Not bad at all.
I used to see these from time to time back when I ran funds. Not a critical indicator, but useful as a reference. Naturally they came from shamans who actually had a bit of spiritual juice. This one didn’t reach that level, yet it still kept the proper form.
“If you went out and ordered something like this, you’d pay tens of thousands of won a sheet. Thanks to you I just saved a pile of cash.”
“I don’t know.”
“Why? You were so good at acting cute. Come on—there’s nothing you can’t do if you try.”
“I~ can’t~ hear~ you!”
All thanks to Sora’s hard work. Yet she herself was being thoroughly modest about the results. In the already cramped studio she had claimed the farthest corner, knees hugged tight against her chest.
With those breasts sticking out a good fifteen centimeters, the posture must be pretty comfortable.
She even had her hands clamped over her ears. Apparently she still could not accept what had happened the night before.
“This is why you need a few more years on you before you start reading faces.”
“…….”
“One look and it’s obvious you’ve got the kind of face that reels men in, yet here you are acting like a virgin.”
“Why the hell would I reel men in, you crazy bastard?!”
“You can hear just fine.”
The male seniors in the physiognomy department. A fresh, sexy freshman like Sora asking a favor? Of course they couldn’t refuse.
“Aang~ Oppas. It would be so nice if you granted Sora’s little request.”
Fuck.
I muttered the curse under my breath; no one seemed to hear. Lucky the people involved were ordinary civilians.
Even Aoi Sora might have been like this back when she was still a virgin.
Everyone has a green, unripe period. Future Sora was one thing; present-day Sora did not look like she had much experience with men.
“Never even been to a club? Or is it that guys just swarm you if you stand still?”
“I just don’t go, okay?”
“Why not?”
“Why… there’s no real ‘why.’ It’s not a good place.”
How good a place it is!
If I hadn’t been getting door-cut at my age, table one would always have been mine. And she refused to enjoy a cultural facility like that.
“Anyway, I’m going to keep asking, so polish up those man-seduction techniques.”
“Why should I?!”
“A trade already executed can’t be canceled.”
Displeased eyes. She sealed her lips and glared as her form of protest.
Complete baby. Absolute baby.
It was enough to make a man sigh. In a stock market that will steal your nose the moment you blink, a greenhorn like this would never survive.
“You’ve got to get worn down a little. Why are you flailing around like some pure virgin?”
“Stop.”
“Hm?”
“Stop saying weird things… I don’t even know how I’m supposed to take that.”
Stock noob. Of course she was. Learning stocks too easily is actually more dangerous. I had expected that much. I wasn’t about to demand fruit from a tree that hadn’t even grown yet.
No way.
A chilling thought slid through my mind. Statistically the odds were near zero. Yet her reaction—arms crossed over her chest, watching me carefully—made me wonder.
“Are you a virgin?”
“Are you insane?!”
“Hey, I’m allowed to ask. It’s not like I’m trying to eat you or anything. Why the drama?”
The one-in-a-million possibility landed dead center. A deep sigh was inevitable.
How the hell does that Venn diagram even exist?
Twenty years old. Half-decent face. Machine-tooled body. Had every senior at school been a eunuch?
“I am genuinely speechless.”
“I’m the one who’s speechless, okay?”
“Don’t talk to me. I’m busy.”
“Hmph! That’s my line.”
If she had just gone to a club once, the professionals would have handled the rest for her. Now I understood why the whole relationship had felt so awkward.
I’m a guy who doesn’t even eat head-family kimchi!
Old-maid hysteria is famous, but virgin hysteria is nothing to laugh at either. Ignore it and your life can go straight to hell.
I had learned that the hard way once already. In this life I would not repeat the same mistake.
“What did you buy?”
“I said don’t talk to me.”
“I wasn’t talking to you—I was asking what the ticker is.”
“That sounds exactly like ‘I drank, but I didn’t drive drunk.’”
See? Dangerous. Obsessive like only a virgin can be.
Could just be academic curiosity.
If it was the latter, I didn’t mind teaching her. But stocks are, at their core—
“I’ve never even heard of this company.”
“Newly listed.”
“Market cap?”
“Thirty billion won.”
“That’s a total trash stock, isn’t it?”
“…….”
She had to realize it herself. No amount of book learning would ever make someone great.
Europe’s Warren Buffett. Kostolany’s line captures the ecosystem of the stock market more perfectly than anything else.
“Don’t call it a trash stock. Call it a small-cap.”
“Ah, yes~ So is it a good company or a bad company?”
“Haa…”
“Could you please answer?”
“Just feel it! Your small-cap sensitivity is lacking.”
Reason alone isn’t enough; you need sensibility too. Stocks—especially the Korean market—have that side to them.
In that sense…
It is the perfect training ground for an investor’s instincts. How a company’s share price actually climbs.
“It is a total trash stock! Thanks to you, senior, I’m stuck holding trash and it’s driving me crazy.”
“Who told you to buy trash?”
“Earlier you said small-cap~ And yesterday you said something about Son Heung-min scoring a goal and the stock going up.”
“When I bought and when you bought are different.”
“How are they different? It’s the same stock.”
“What time, what minute, what second did you buy? I bought at 9:28:22!”
“Are you in elementary school, senior?”
In a word: imagination.
Before an investor buys a company, he dreams inside his head.
Take Woori Son Food, for example.
Is it real? Is Son Heung-min scoring actually a positive catalyst? The price is rising, so you start to believe. Son Heung-min is good. World-class. So maybe it will climb even higher—that dream.
“I bought at the forty-three-minute mark. Not that big a difference.”
“Haa…”
“Stop sighing!”
“The day will come when you understand how heavy those fifteen minutes really are.”
“I don’t think that day is coming.”
And the dream vanishes the moment everyone faces reality. That is why Woori Son F&G’s price crashed.
That’s why they say investment is not science, but art.
Artistic investing. Art can be worth a hundred won or a hundred million depending on the moment and the era. Van Gogh’s paintings that no one would buy now trade for astronomical sums. The only difference is that the time axis is completely arbitrary.
“Buying more? The same one?”
“Yeah.”
“Why not just buy it all at once…”
“Small-caps are delicate. You have to handle them carefully.”
“What are they, glass?”
Of course that isn’t the only reason. Real trading requires a whole set of techniques if you want to make money.
Especially the market right now.
It is a small-cap-driven market. Because market caps are tiny, even small amounts of money move prices sharply. You need to scale in little by little—especially on names you are certain will rise.
“Can I ask one thing?”
“As long as you don’t bite.”
“Why bother buying small-caps at all? If you just filter out the evil CEOs, there are plenty of good large-caps, right?”
“You’re not taking the hint.”
Especially at this particular moment. Global markets had entered a boom after the 2015 correction; by 2017 the bull run was nearly spent.
If I had regressed a year earlier I would have been buying large-caps too.
Far more stable. No need to shoulder big risk. Right now, though, the reward-to-risk just isn’t there.
“Large-caps have already risen as much as they’re going to. I’m looking for the ones that will explode among the small-caps that haven’t moved yet.”
“Ah…”
Different stocks rise in different seasons. A smart investor uses that to cut risk and harvest more profit.
That’s why jumping into the market late and buying something like Five-Star Electronics gets you fucked.
They call it business-cycle investing. Sora seemed to sense something; she nodded heavily.
“Senior, you actually know a ton.”
“If you don’t know at least this much you can’t call yourself a pro gambler. The only flaw is that I’m not missing an ear.”
“Shall I cut one off for you?”
Theory is only theory. Knowledge feels useful when you learn it, yet in practice it is often completely worthless.
You have to pile up real experience. Knowledge you cannot use is dead knowledge.
“So why did you buy this one? Whether it’s Son Heung-min or whatever, there has to be a reason.”
“Because the illicit stock manipulators finished accumulating.”
“What?”
“Kids don’t need to know.”
I was sharpening that live-trading sense again. I would drag my skills back to their absolute peak. Physiognomy was just for cutting risk. After so long, the thought of gambling—no, investing—made my whole body itch.
“Ugh!”
“Are you seriously a kid?”
“My dad’s the same—nobody ever teaches me what the manipulators actually are.”
“Then go watch the movie Operation.”
“A movie?”
It shows you the true face of the Korean securities market in a single glance.