Theme Stocks

Theme stocks.

The nuclear phase-out policy.

And of all the sectors worth hunting inside it, solar came first.

Offshore wind, though…

A stock's company value mattered, of course—but in the end, someone still had to buy it. What nobody knew about, nobody cared about.

Solar?

There wasn't a person alive who hadn't seen the panels bolted to a house roof. Offshore wind, by contrast—most people didn't even know what it was.

Which is exactly how the manipulators usually think.

They hit the sector where retail money is most likely to pile in first. Float it once, and the whole market's attention locks on. Then the retail traders who missed the ride start fretting—I didn't get any?—and only after that do the operators float offshore wind as the second act.

For now, solar. The large-caps had already taken a short-term hit of inflows.

But for ships that had just caught a national-policy gale, the move wasn't exactly spectacular. This was only the beginning.

The trash stocks—no, the small-caps—still need accumulating.

Large-caps, even on a good day, maybe doubled. Small-caps were where the so-called life-changing runs lived. If you picked the right line, that is.

I was tearing through every indicator I had, hunting for the perfect small-cap, when—

Ding-dong~♪

The doorbell. Hye-ri must have come back. Left something behind, maybe?

Not like my charm is exactly dripping off me right now.

Or maybe the afterglow just hadn't worn off yet. I swallowed a snort of laughter and opened the door.

"What."

"……"

"Why are you standing there grinning like a creep."

Sora was on the doorstep, looking thoroughly unimpressed. My eye level—calibrated for Hye-ri—landed squarely on a pair of breasts.

Those things are stupidly huge.

Sora, by contrast, had gone quiet. She still showed up at the club, but we hadn't had a private conversation in ages.

"Doesn't it smell weird in your room? Like something nasty."

"Smell of what? I know the smell ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of a pot."

"You always say crap like that when you've got nothing to say."

She's going to know that smell eventually anyway.

If she walked in scowling, it'd look like I'd done something wrong. All I'd done was bond with a junior.

Creeeak—!

She shoved the window open on her own authority, aired the place out, and only then turned back to me, looking satisfied.

"Sunbae, there's something I want to talk to you about."

"What. I'm busy—summarize it in three syllables."

"Three syllables is way too short."

A beige turtleneck. Plain, monochrome—but the hanger it was draped on was a work of art. The line that started at those big breasts carved out every curve beneath.

God, I want to grab them just once.

One hand around that narrow waist, the other crushing those contrasting tits in a fist—that alone might be enough to finish me.

"Sunbae?"

"Ah—so what is it!"

"If I had to summarize… it's, uh. First love."

So I've made another girl cry after all.

Maybe the moment had finally arrived. Sora's eyes wouldn't leave me.

Charm. Some people aged like whiskey, opened up like wine with time. I happened to be exactly that kind of man. That kind of man I was.

I was already privately celebrating the arrival of my peak popularity era when—

"Right. As your first love, I do have a certain responsibility."

"What the hell are you talking about. This is about stocks."

"……"

Slightly off the mark. But the big-picture outcome would be the same either way.

Anyway.

The first stock Sora had bought after she finally stopped jerking off. She'd clawed out of the red—but not out of the PTSD. She'd clearly been turning it over ever since: what she'd done wrong, and what the right response should have been.

"I think I only listened to the positive news and bought at the top."

"Yeah. There are things you only see after you cut your losses."

"I've been trading again while keeping that mistake in mind."

As if an answer would just fall out of the sky. This wasn't a world where one experience leveled you up on easy mode.

You've got to get knocked around a lot.

The way Hye-ri had been practically brand-new even with a boyfriend. Surviving a first love was only the opening act.

"My results are… kind of—"

"Ugh. You got wrecked again."

"I did ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠not get that wrecked! I'm doing this with a learning mindset right now."

A fresh rationalization had entered the chat, apparently. Getting pumped and dumped for nothing, then bouncing from one guy to the next.

Thinking about it that way is kind of hot, actually.

In the stock market, it wasn't a bad choice. Experience was the prerequisite that sat at the front of every kind of growth.

"Hmm…"

"So? Isn't this a decent entry zone?"

"You still don't know a damn thing."

"Ugh!"

She didn't have the experience. I sat the still-innocent Sora down in front of the computer and pulled up her HTS, then took a look at the mess of her recent buys.

"Why are you buying this trash."

"These are major corporations with market caps over five trillion won."

"And so what. Who the hell is buying this stuff these days."

Sure enough. She was trading almost exclusively large-caps—high market cap, high name recognition.

Fair enough.

And it wasn't wrong, either. Large-caps were heavy, but they were safe in proportion. As long as you could factor in the unconscionable companies, you weren't going to fail catastrophically.

"Still, they look undervalued relative to fundamentals. Seems worth buying."

"Fundamentals this, fundamentals that—"

"Yes, yes~ Maybe you don't know fundamentals, but you know heavy metal, right?"

"I like that one."

But if it were that simple, every person on earth would already be a stock-market millionaire. The most ridiculous part was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠still sitting there.

"It's not fair."

"What isn't."

"Sunbae, you only buy weird trash stocks that don't even make money—and I buy undervalued stocks that actually earn money, and I still don't make a profit."

Sora had every right to pout. By common sense, it didn't add up.

That common sense, though—was strictly a civilian's common sense. She still hadn't grasped the market's actual physiology.

Miss a woman's period and you're screwed, right?

Stocks were the same. Even a great stock had a reason for not going up.

"For example, when you're having sex—"

"Excuse me?"

"No—think of it like there are a lot of restaurants in the neighborhood."

Sora's face crumpled. Even when I tried to give her an easy analogy, she shut it down.

Ah, why do I have to filter myself!

She was shaping up to be as wholesome as a vegan meal plan—while owning the most obscene body in the entire school.

"Does every restaurant get roughly the same number of customers?"

"Probably not."

"Why."

"Wouldn't people flock to the places that taste good, look nice, and have reasonable prices? I know I would."

Correct. The principle of capitalism. You didn't need a headache-inducing theory for something that obvious.

"Then what happens to the rest of the restaurants?"

"They get weeded out, right? Unless the owners put in more effort."

"Exactly. That's it."

"Huh?"

The stock market wasn't any different. The same laws that ran the world applied here too.

Korea has a lot of companies.

Five to ten times Germany or Switzerland. You couldn't possibly know every restaurant—every stock—one by one. Which was why the domestic market so often ran on theme-stock seasons. Similar sectors got bundled together.

Construction with construction. Airlines with airlines. Steel with steel. On average, they rose together and fell together.

"No matter how good a stock you buy, if that theme is getting pressed down, the price drops with it."

"But—"

"Yeah?"

"Aren't theme stocks, like… bad?"

Which was also how excessive speculative heat got concentrated. Bundle something into a hot theme and the price could explode for no reason at all.

Get caught on the wrong side of one and you might never escape for the rest of your life. That was why people said not to buy theme stocks.

"Theme stocks as a concept are something you absolutely have to understand."

"I see……"

"Individual stock analysis matters—but if you can't read the flow of a theme, you can't call yourself a real trader."

The flip side: you could also make serious money. When public attention piled in, prices rose past a company's actual value. That was exactly what I was hunting—finding the stock inside the solar theme that would sling the hardest.

"Where do you even learn to read that kind of flow?"

"You really are a straight-A nerd down to the bone, aren't you."

"Then what am I… supposed to do."

"You learn how the world actually works."

Stocks aren't what people generally imagine.

The more economics knowledge someone had, the more experience they actually needed. Straight-laced Sora, especially, needed to get knocked around until she stopped giving off virgin vibes wherever she went.

"Do anonymous communities."

"What?"

"You don't know them? Want me to send you a link?"

"Aren't those, like, bad sites?"

"……"

How the world worked. What other people were paying attention to. In modern society, it took a few clicks.

Which is exactly the problem.

You could get swallowed by preconceptions. End up with a biased worldview without even noticing. Which was why you needed anonymous communities.

As Sora said, some of them had earned their terrible reputations. Limit it to stocks, though, and the story changed—because anyone could say anything.

May 2017.

A piece of news that would remake the Republic of Korea hit the airwaves.

The closure of Korea's first nuclear power plant. And the halt of construction on Shin-Kori Units 5 and 6. The opening shot of the nuclear phase-out had been fired.

That historic speech was still underway.

Nuclear: 26.8%. Coal: 43.1%. Natural gas: 22.8%. That was Korea's power generation by source. The new administration's green policy was about to shake the existing ecosystem to pieces. Nearly 70% of the country's energy—nuclear plus coal—would have to be replaced from somewhere else.

.

.

.

The reason solar was drawing this much heat: among eco-friendly energy sources, it had the highest replacement potential.

The aftershocks hit the stock market too. Hana Solutions and the related theme names spiked. Solar power plants—if they actually got built, the order-book windfall would be enormous, and the market was giddy on that expectation.

Of course it wasn't all support. Authoritative voices in academia were raising alarms. It wouldn't work. It was realistically impossible, and it shouldn't be done.

But those facts—

Would only come out after the operation was finished.

As expected.

Kim Min-gu couldn't wipe the smirk off his face. The government was actually pushing the green policy. He had more than enough material to float an operation stock—because ordinary people believed it.

Articles poured out. They spread through the communities. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠A massive current was about to form. When everyone said yes, there was no one left who could say no. And even if someone did, they'd be buried.

When everyone believes it, that becomes the truth.