Powell-ese Listening Test
"US stocks?"
"Yeah. I've been getting interested lately…"
Sora had her eye on the Nasdaq too. No—given her temperament, that was the market that suited her.
I already knew that.
She'd been like that from the first time they met. She'd been playing at stock analysis with a bunch of half-baked nonsense. It just happened to be Korean equities back then. And this was a market where anyone who tried to "analyze" it got wrecked without fail.
"So you wanted to ask Oppa about it?"
"Yes. I want to know."
"In bed?"
"Kyaa!"
In US stocks, analysis actually meant something. For Sora, it would be a far more comfortable market environment.
Asking me that in the middle of yass. Unbelievable.
Sora's studio apartment. He'd come over to talk her into moving into his villa. And while he was at it, he was wringing her dry. Looking at a body this filthy-hot, there was no way he wasn't going to jump her.
Paang!
A body that made you lose your mind. Her stomach was so flat you could see her ribs, and yet every place that pressed against him had just enough soft flesh.
"S-still, I was curious…"
"You're not supposed to talk during a meal."
"A meal?"
"I'm eating you, aren't I?"
That was why he called it eating. He was slowly savoring a woman's most delicious parts.
Get some self-awareness.
She was the one being eaten on a table called a bed.
"Ah…!!"
A breath that had been buried deep in her lungs spilled out—because something had gone in deep enough to take its place.
Who the hell talks stocks right now.
She still had room to spare. He needed to fuck her until her soul left her body so she couldn't run her mouth about anything else.
"Ah—okay, just… slowly…"
"Don't clench your pussy."
"Yes…"
"And don't squeeze too tight, either."
He could train this sex-machine body into something that was his. Make her conscious of the fact that she was a female.
The second she loosens up even a little, she tries to suck me in.
Natural talent. If he got a proper grip on her early, she'd become a quiet, obedient woman who whimpered under him.
"Ah!"
And that was exactly what was happening. When he rapped against that deep spot inside her, she let out a shattered moan. She trembled all over, her breathing turning sharp and ragged. A body developed with this much care couldn't help but feel it.
"You about to come?"
"……"
"Got it. Oppa'll eat you up nice."
She nodded and nodded, arms locked tight around him. All her focus was on the orgasm. Legs spread obscenely wide. Drool at the corner of her mouth, panting—there wasn't a shred of composure left in her.
Fuck, that's hot.
She'd been the type with her nose stuck in the air. Even now she put up a total iron wall against other men. And he was the one breaking a woman like that. Making her understand she was just one female—that she was his woman.
Bureuk! Burureuk!
That sense of conquest. It hit even harder because they were in her studio, saturated with Sora's scent.
An option you couldn't buy for a fortune.
And she was giving it to him. Even while gasping for breath, she looked up at him with those sweet eyes.
"Was it good?"
"Yes."
"Did you come?"
"So hard."
Her cheeks were flushed red. Unlike when he was wringing her out, now that she was the one feeling it, she was embarrassed.
Yeah. When you're this demure, it's perfect.
Her chest rose and fell with her breathing. When he squeezed, soft flesh spilled between his fingers. That impossibly firm flesh had grown a little softer. Body and heart, both being trained bit by bit.
"Alright. Now that you've been deliciously eaten—"
"Ugh… don't say 'eaten.'"
"I've still got to eat this, too."
"Ah."
A first experience left its mark for a long time. He was filling in a blank white canvas with his own color.
She's already completely forgotten her real first time.
Better she didn't remember. He would carve into her bones the fact that his cock was something to be afraid of.
Chureup!
She wrapped her hand around the tip of his shaft and took it into her mouth. Just as he'd taught her, she worked the blowjob with earnest care.
"I couldn't tell just by looking…"
"Hm?"
"Senior's is really huge."
"Ahem. Right?"
This was different from when she'd been playfully jerking him off, saying it was fun to make him come. She was looking at it with a distinctly respectful attitude now.
If I just keep training her like this…
It would be perfect. He'd set out to make her a female who whimpered when she got filled and submitted when she served—
Jjuup! Jjuup!
He felt the pressure. Before he knew it, she had more than half of him in her mouth and was actively sucking. She spun her tongue the way you'd lick a screw-pop and pushed him deeper, until she hit the back of her throat.
"That throat squeeze—"
"Jjeup-jjeup!"
"Where the hell did you learn that, you little—!"
"♡"
A few handjobs and she'd become the ace of a handjob parlor; a few blowjobs and she was turning into the ace of a lip café.
Jjuup!
Churreup!
She worked her tongue against him the way she would in a kiss. That soft, intense stimulation pulled it out of him before he could stop it. She didn't miss the moment he opened up. She locked her hand around the tip and, with the pressure of her mouth, sucked without mercy.
Gulp! Gulp!
In the quiet room, the only sounds were her swallowing—spit, precum, and the white fluid that followed.
"Stop sucking."
"Jjeup-jjeup!"
"I said stop! There's nothing left!"
"Ah—there's no more?"
She tilted her head with an innocent face that claimed to know nothing—while deploying five-year lip-café skills.
She's really doing the clueless face.
Her sexual knowledge was thin. Apparently she'd decided the stuff inside was structured to come out if you just kept sucking.
"It did come out, though. For real."
"That was you milking it."
"I thought if I sucked, it'd just go whoosh and come out from inside…"
"What am I, a cream-filled fish bun?"
She wore a look of pure accomplishment. He'd told her to clean him up, and she'd gone and sucked the essence out of him from the inside. That kind of blowjob—it wasn't like he'd never received one, but something about Sora's felt special.
It's the care she puts into it, too.
Getting it with the mouth was, honestly, an act that came with resistance. You had to be pretty close before someone would even consider it. Doing it this aggressively meant one of two things: she was getting paid, or she was genuinely in love.
"Still, I did good, right?"
"You sucked it out just like the Gangnam unnies."
"Your metaphors, for fuck's sake."
Eyes full of love. Packed with the unspoiled purity only possible in the early twenties.
She's just ace-level skill. That's all.
Even the Gangnam unnies put in professional effort—if someone pulled this off on pure talent, they might feel a little empty about it.
"Senior, I have something to ask."
"You gonna suck again?"
"Not that! Ugh!"
But stocks were still stocks. Getting a little wet didn't make it a field you could just casually understand.
It is that kind of season, though.
Sora's question. He knew what she was after, and it wasn't just the lower half. This was about the time when those people started showing up.
"Those people?"
"Yeah. The ones who got lucky and made money."
"Lucky?"
They showed up every cycle. Countries that rocketed up once speculative capital poured in.
Classic examples.
In 2007, the Vietnam craze hit. Korean investors had started eyeing Vietnam.
It's a developing country, right? It could grow like Korea someday, couldn't it? From a Korean perspective, that was a reasonable thought. They jumped in full of dreams and hope.
"If it was 2007…"
"Plenty of them jumped into the Han River, too."
And it repeated in 2015. The Chinese tech-stock craze took off.
The logic that China could only go up and to the right. Once stock prices rose, that was how it looked. The media screamed about it nonstop. Investors who believed it were left with nothing but tears.
Same story now.
Lately, US stocks were getting all the attention. Not because America had grown massively. Simply because the returns had come out high. For the past five years, the US market had done nothing but climb.
"So you're saying US stocks rose on a bubble?"
"Yeah."
"But still—there has to be some kind of foresight involved…"
"If that were possible, chasing the S&P 500's average return wouldn't be the goal of every investor alive."
Nobody can predict a bubble. The current rally in the US market was abnormal.
There was a technical way to look at it. Net income relative to market cap. You looked at the P/E ratio.
"How high is that, exactly?"
"Normally, even on the high side, it stays under 18."
"Whoa."
"Meaning it's still a long way from not being a bubble."
Under normal conditions, a correction should have hit ages ago. The short-sellers would have smashed the market over the head.
One lunatic had made it impossible. A genuine lunatic was sitting in the presidency.
"Trump…"
"People who jump in without knowing that background just assume US stocks go up and to the right forever."
There is no free lunch. People forget that obvious fact. And when the number of those people swells—
A leading indicator of a market top.
They sprout up like weeds. Substandard funds get churned out by the truckload. Mindless longs. Because the market had been running so long that the only way to make money was to lock into confirmation bias.
Gulp.
She wasn't so green that she couldn't grasp what that meant. The US market right now was in a position where a simple correction wouldn't cut it. The power struggle between Powell and Trump had only just begun. Dreaming of a rebound on half-baked good news was pure optimism.
"When do you think it'll end, Senior? In your view?"
"That's the thing—I don't know."
"?"
"That's why you have to listen to the speeches."
"Ah."
You needed the official word out of the principals' own mouths. And they weren't going to kindly disclose it for you.
Interpretation.
Fortunately, he'd prepared. Over the past two weeks, he'd cracked the whip on the club members and built out a system.
"It really feels like a fund now."
"Right?"
"That person you mentioned to me—you said he runs a fund too…"
"You'll find out if you wait and watch."
Crisis was opportunity. But it could also just be a crisis, full stop. Distinguishing between the two was an investor's real skill.
In a bull market, any dog or cow can make money.
You only learn that a bear market is different once you're in one. Long-surviving investors weren't respected for nothing.
It was time to feel Warren Buffett's maxim with their whole bodies.