Force Versus Force

Rumors.

They don't work on just any stock.

From an institution's perspective.

There's no real reason to buy that particular name. Even if they do, it's a long-term play. When the hype cools, they finish running the numbers and start accumulating at their leisure.

There was no time for that.

The second the clock hit 9:00 a.m., the mind games began.

"Oh, five percent gap up!"

"Should we sell?"

"No."

An article had dropped the day before—Jang Min-seo was reportedly hoping to sign with 3M.

She's the talk of the town right now, after all.

Under normal circumstances it wouldn't have been easy. Getting a journalist on the phone, getting them to write exactly what you wanted—there was no friendly press contact waiting in the wings. They hadn't secured that kind of footing yet.

Club connections. Jisu, the media and communications major, had tracked down a graduate working the entertainment desk.

"Does this come with an incentive too?"

"If it pans out."

"Hell yeah!"

Hankuk University made it possible. There was a senior already thriving at a major outlet.

I was ready to slip some greasy little sum to a hack and get the piece written that way.

A paper with a real name carried far more weight. The credibility of the article alone made people believe. And it wasn't even something to feel guilty about. Dream Girls was the biggest entertainment story in the country right now. Information people would pay for—and they'd handed it over free. The paper should have been thanking them.

They'd already collected.

On the back of that article, 3M's share price was rocketing. The unrealized gain had already blown past five hundred million.

"Whoa, it's still climbing."

"It's gone up a lot already…"

"Shouldn't we sell now?"

"Wait."

He knew how to maximize it. The so-called entry and exit points.

A stock that just printed a fifty-two-week high like this…

Short interest was piled high. Institutions that decided the price was absurd had it marked as prey. Then it exploded anyway. The bubble was threatening to become real, and the institutions were sweating.

They had to absorb the supply somehow. They'd be running wash trades, trying to bait sellers.

The second anyone parks sell orders, they'll snatch them ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠up, won't they?

That was why "I sell and it goes up" happened. Sell now and only the institutions would be happy. So he had to wait for a situation that made the institutions sick to their stomachs.

The game-changer was almost here.

Hyenas. When volatility spiked like this, players who only cared about the spread came running.

Institutions that eat other institutions, that is.

He knew their situation cold. They were more than capable of the reckless moves retail never dared.

"Whoa! Whoa!"

"Foreigners are buying like crazy."

"S-sell? Sell?"

"I said wait."

They did it professionally, systematically. They ran the numbers through their programs and then stepped in.

You're sitting on a short ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠book, aren't you?

The moment foreigners started buying, the institutions that had shorted felt the fire under their feet. They had no choice but to chase. And that chase turned into a full-blown price explosion.

Retail caught the scent too. Once they figured out why the price was ripping, they piled on.

Re-buying, too. Retail that had been underwater for ages dumped everything on the bounce. Then the sudden rebound lit up the regret. It was more than enough to trigger a second wave of buying.

They come in after calculating exactly this scenario.

That was the foreign institutions' short-term playbook. Map the sell and buy pressure, project the expected return. Modern equities ran on that foundation. Every cutting-edge program in the book got used—

"On three, two, one—we sell."

"Ah, I already sold."

"I told you not to sell."

—but at the end of the day, humans still pulled the trigger. He could roughly guess what levels they'd set.

They'll be aiming for the fifty-two-week high.

Pushing the price higher wasn't hard. There wasn't much supply stacked on the offer. Institutional shorts. Retail greed. On the chart it created a meaningful inflection point—meaning future price action became nearly impossible to model.

Except for the foreign player who'd started the whole circus.

That was the idea. Anticipating the anticipation—that was his investment philosophy. He parked sell orders right before the fifty-two-week high.

Sounds started rising from every corner of the club room.

I split my account across multiple brokerages.

They were dumping everything at once. Without a dedicated program, the club members had to do it by hand.

Dump it in one giant block and someone notices. Split it across accounts, drip it out with staggered timing—

And the fight starts.

The human eye couldn't track it. Programs immediately propped up the quotes. The so-called support and resistance lines. They'd wanted to force that fifty-two-week high no matter what.

Volume poured in far beyond what anyone expected. The programs' lightning-fast response became poison instead.

Jongpil, time to hand back that bonus.

Retail had been shaken out. Institutions were nervous. That was exactly why they'd come in swinging for a short-term scalp. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Neither retail nor institutions—a third force. They never imagined someone had already low-ticked seventy-one billion won of inventory.

They flipped their call too late. Once the breakout failed, they started dumping inventory immediately. They'd ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠thrash around for a while, trying to escape the average they'd gotten stuck with.

"Foreigners are pulling everything out!"

"We sold first."

"Those guys are completely bagholding."

"So even foreigners get stuck sometimes…"

The stock market had always been that kind of place. It sorted people into winners and losers.

Foreigners aren't invincible either.

They only looked mighty in this tiny Korean market. On Wall Street they were just another beast. His daily bread, in other words.

For a first hunt, the results were decent enough.

"Whoa!"

"Wooo!"

"I made a hundred million."

"I made a hundred ten."

"I think I sold at the highest average?"

The club members too. He'd designed the strategy, but the exit timing was each person's own skill.

If I'm handing out incentives, that's the part that earns them.

Anyone who beat the average deserved recognition. Of course, the real reason the whole club was moving was—

"Jang Min-seo's been talking so much shit lately."

"She's been hyping herself into the stratosphere."

"This 3M contract thing seems to have spawned a whole anti-fanbase…"

Trends. You could glance at Google Trends for a rough read, but the entertainment industry was dominated by core fandom influence.

You know the type.

Young, right? Peak MZ generation? Even a few extra years of age made the whole field nearly impossible to parse. Kids in their early twenties understood it best. They tracked Dream Girls' latest movements.

"You open with cursing?"

Sora too. Apparently she wasn't thrilled about the company tour he'd arranged for her, even though she'd wanted it so badly.

She really does whatever she wants.

She was also the one working the hardest. She was feeding them real-time intel from the ground.

"And?"

"If we make a killing this round, I'll let you."

The show didn't air the same day it was shot. Filming took time, and editing wasn't a one- or two-day job either.

Looks like the Jang Min-seo coin just rug-pulled.

Still early in the program. Rankings could flip at any moment. And a new dark horse could always appear.

"For real?"

"Oh no, I just got spoiled."

"Pharmacy, JPG, and 3M really are on another level, huh."

Sora had entered through the general audition track. There were trainees and aspiring idols too, but the original pitch was discovering talented civilians.

It's like the top kids from regular humanities high schools strutting around—

—and then the science high school, Gyeonggi High, and Minjok Academy kids walk in. Everything they'd been doing suddenly felt like playing house. Dream Girls was a full-scale idol survival show. Opportunity might be equal; results never were.

"So the general contestants were just there to get stepped on."

"Suhyun said she was already packing her bags."

"Sora coin's about to get delisted too."

It had been scheduled from the start. The early impact had just made viewers forget.

Better dump her before she becomes a delisted girl.

Whether it was 3M or JPG, he wanted her sold to whoever would take her, fast. She needed to take one for the team—for his account and the club members'.

It was all theater anyway. Sprinkle a few rumors, wait until the hype ripened, then dump the inventory.

K-stocks are supposed to be done the K-stock way.

Every market participant in Korea recognized that as the proper method.

Sora's take was a little different.

No—something he hadn't even imagined was unfolding. Maybe it was worth diamond-handing the Sora coin a little longer.