Company Visit
The recent stock market.
.
.
.
The atmosphere had changed completely from half a year ago.
Even the investors who had charged in claiming it was a bargain buy...
[Factory interior photo.jpg]
It's fucking soda!! Motherfucker I just clocked in
One by one, they were waking up to reality.
They had no choice but to admit they had been too optimistic about the market.
The stock prices only kept falling.
Most investors were trapped in their positions, groaning under the weight.
It's rough
Investment losses.
The pressure only kept mounting.
That was the nature of the stock market.
It moved ahead of the real economy.
Half a year later, the economy had fully entered a recession.
Bad news poured in every single day.
Institutions and foreigners selling in tandem.
Negative thoughts piled up with nowhere else to go.
Making money in stocks looked impossible.
Even the investors who had barely survived were losing their confidence.
If you live on Dokdo they give you 1 million won a month in support
Use that for living expenses and be a full-time investor you bastards lmaooooooo
It was a terrible time to be investing.
But risk always coexisted with return.
Living on Dokdo for a million won a month? That's tempting... Ah, no.
Sora had become one of them too.
The market had fallen far enough that she started seeing it as a chance for bargain buys.
The world simply wasn't that easy.
Every time she bet on a rebound, the market slammed right back down as if nothing had happened.
Just a bit of bad luck. Yeah... that's it.
She had taken investment losses.
Even after managing risk in her own way, she couldn't avoid the red.
Entering late and still ending up like this.
People who had invested from the peak must be dying inside.
Still, it'll rebound someday.
Just like last February.
Even when earnings were that good, the stock prices never escaped their downtrend.
The opposite phenomenon could happen too.
The problem was that nobody knew when that would be.
Not every piece of bad news might have been priced in yet.
The news was strangely silent about inflation.
The real economy looked incredibly rough, though.
The company's internal data.
She had checked it herself, so there was no doubt.
It was severe enough to make the recent bear market completely understandable.
But it wasn't a major topic in the market.
There might be another crash still coming.
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Passengers on the inverse bus, please check that your seatbelts are fastened ^^
There was also an investment method that bet on the decline, aiming for exactly that.
If you were going to do it, you should have done it at least around the 2400 level.
Too late to board the bus...
The direction of the market.
She simply couldn't tell.
The information available to retail investors had its limits.
[KOSPI 240-day long-term moving average chart.jpg]
The long-term MA broke less than a month ago yep
Once it breaks you have to see it as at least a one-year bear market
Charts.
Technical analysis.
None of it was material she could place real confidence in.
Economic indicators couldn't be trusted either.
If there was one thing she could still put her faith in...
Tap, tap!
It was only what she confirmed with her own two eyes.
That one and only method.
Sora sent an SOS to her senior.
Bargain buying.
"Stock prices have come down a lot lately, right?"
"Well, yeah."
"Rationally I think it's an oversold zone... but the moment I buy, I get so anxious I can't hold it."
It was what investors always aimed for.
But once the price actually dropped to the level they wanted...
The buy button becomes impossible to press. That's human psychology for you.
Stocks were about psychology.
That was also why you could hear it a hundred times and still not understand until you experienced it yourself.
"That's completely normal."
"No matter how hard I try to think rationally, it just doesn't work."
"How is a person supposed to not shiver in the cold? There's a cold wave slamming the market right now."
"Oh~!"
It was an unconditional reflex developed for survival.
You couldn't suppress it just by trying to suppress it.
"Humans don't fear God... 'Fear' itself is God." — God Enel
Just like that famous line from One Piece.
Going against the danger signal carved into your DNA was impossible.
And the ones who pull it off...
That was what made investors a different species from ordinary people.
Sora hadn't reached that point yet.
"Senior, you actually sound like an expert sometimes."
"Ahem!"
"In that sense, I have one request~."
"?"
You had to go through a lot of experiences.
Like how a cold shower feels like death at first, but later you get used to it somehow.
A company visit?
Even when the market shook, you could keep your reason.
Looking at the real thing instead of just numbers was one method.
"Out of nowhere?"
"Not out of nowhere... we went to Food Market last time, right?"
"And?"
"Looking at the income statement back then, I felt a lot of things."
Any investor would be interested.
There was no information more certain than going and seeing it yourself.
What a pain in the ass, seriously.
That was what ordinary people thought.
Even among actual investors, the cases of people who went all the way to the site were rare.
"If you want to feel something, go jack off to your daughter."
"You crazy bastard."
"What's the point of going for something like that."
"You go, Senior!"
Because it was a hassle.
And because the times had gotten good enough that you didn't need to do that kind of thing.
You can find everything with an internet search.
It wasn't like ten years ago when the quality of information was garbage.
Just skimming the official materials was enough to grasp the flow of the economy.
"That alone isn't enough for me to clearly understand the recent market flow..."
"And looking will make you understand?"
"You wanna throw hands?"
"No."
She looked ready to smash him with those rocket breasts.
A mass of flesh the size of a human head multiplied by gravitational acceleration would hurt like hell.
Not the marshmallow type like someone else, either.
Sora's story.
It wasn't that he didn't understand.
There were definitely things you only felt by seeing them in person.
"So?"
"I don't know how I'm supposed to go."
"And?"
"Senior, take me with you. Please?"
From the perspective of experience, it was worth trying.
He could understand her suddenly throwing a tantrum too.
Ordinary investors really don't have a way to go.
Reason 1: Too much of a hassle.
Reason 2: Companies won't accept them.
In Korea, the latter was especially big.
To put it bluntly, given the Korean corporate culture of treating shareholders like dog shit, if you said you were coming for a company visit, the IR manager cut you off right there.
A laughably sad reality.
"Well, I don't see why not."
"Really? Yes!"
"What are you gonna do for me?"
"We get to go on a date for the first time in a while, isn't that nice~? Right?"
You needed to be an institution rolling at least hundreds of billions before the IR manager would take your questions, invite you to briefings, and come out in a low posture.
Though they're just doing it so you'll buy their corporate bonds.
Granting Sora's wish wasn't easy.
But it wasn't exactly impossible either.
"Here?"
"Yeah."
"Here, you said?"
"Yeah."
"This is Dual Mart."
There was no need to think grandly about it.
A company visit was something you did casually in everyday life.
"Our mom who goes to Walmart every day might be better at retail investing than any analyst." — Wall Street proverb
Consumption was a legitimate economic activity too.
It gathered and gathered until it became corporate earnings.
"While we're at it, we can do some grocery shopping."
"You're just trying to mess with me, aren't you?"
"Bingo."
"Ugh."
It wasn't something to brush off as a simple joke.
The information that got compiled into reports in the first place...
Is the result of people consuming, after all.
Actual consumers could be more sensitive.
That was why the stocks middle-aged women bought without knowing anything sometimes hit surprisingly well.
Dual Mart Traders
Sora would feel it too once she became a middle-aged woman.
She had the body that was born to wear the Dongtan Missy Look, after all.
"Traders?"
"You don't know?"
"I've heard of it. First time coming, though."
Lately these warehouse-style stores were more popular than regular big-box marts.
It was a story that held meaning in distribution studies.
Especially in South Korea.
Dual Mart was a traditional powerhouse in the retail industry.
It had crushed countless competitors and stood tall at the top.
That position.
It was also true that it was gradually shaking.
Because it was facing a challenge from a rising powerhouse.
"Ah, rocket delivery!"
"You know it?"
"Who doesn't use that these days. I feel like I go to the mart less because of it..."
The emergence of e-commerce companies.
They were optimized for the tastes of consumers who wanted everything faster and faster.
And bold investment.
Stories about Masayoshi Son pouring several trillion won into it had made it famous even among consumers lately.
They call it the silent war of the retail industry.
Lupang's growth was monstrous.
There were even talks that in the future it would devour Dual Mart.
It was actually being reflected in the stock price.
From a consumer's perspective, it made sense.
"So big-box marts like Dual Mart should be thought of as a declining industry?"
"No."
"?"
"That's exactly why you need a company visit."
The structure of how the world turned was far more complicated than that.