The Korean Stock Gallery

A stock community.

The Korean Stock Gallery.

It was a community for stock investors — people putting money into the KOSPI and KOSDAQ.

Investors were no exception. Stocks were not a stable way to grow your assets. More often than not, the number went the other way. That was what it meant to put money into a risk asset.

But inside risk lived opportunity — and stock communities existed for exactly that reason. They were places where investors traded information with one another.

What set them apart from ordinary communities was something else entirely.

The board was packed with users running distinctive concepts.

A concept — a second personality you put on for the internet. High-school-girl concept. Daily-poster concept. Anything that projected a self different from everyone else.

They could've just explained it like that from the start.

Sora was deep in gallery mode — active on the Korean Stock Gallery. At first she had no idea how anyone functioned in a place like this. But once she locked in a concept, she realized it wasn't hard at all.

To operate in a place that had lost its mind, you simply had to lose yours too. It was that simple.

Heehee.

Posting what you had for lunch, that sort of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠thing — the activity itself wasn't so different from social media. And as she kept at the gallery, something unexpected happened. The users started treating her like one of their own.

There were minor side effects. They thought she was a middle-aged housewife. The teasing comments kept rolling in.

Tap. Tak!

On the flip side, there were upsides too. What Chan-uk had told her hadn't been a complete lie.

What does depreciation even mean?

This was a stock community, after all. Most of the users actually traded — not for a day or two, but for years. The jargon bled into everyday speech without anyone noticing.

Everything had a lifespan. Depreciation was the accounting expression of how much a machine, a part, any object had been worn down.

So he's saying if I ride it, the bike's lifespan shrinks faster!

A word you'd never use in ordinary life — and yet in the world of stocks, these were terms you had to learn. Once she understood the meaning, a laugh slipped out before she could stop it. Little by little, things like that kept accumulating.

What are they talking about. I'm only 51 kilos.

She pressed her fingertips into her stomach. The flat plane of her belly held not a single inch of laziness. And StockBeautyGoddess wasn't a lie, either — if anything, it was close to the truth.

Of course I don't flaunt it in real life.

There was no way she could lack confidence in her looks. Calling them ajussis was also a fact. A glance around the board made it obvious the average age ran high. That was how the concept had settled into place — a different self that existed only on the internet.

Sora had adapted to this community completely.

Tap. Tak!

The companies listed on the stock market weren't just one or two. Factor in derivatives and the number became impossible to count. Something had to exist to keep trading in all those stocks functioning normally — the shopkeeper, if the market were a storefront.

Market makers? Those were a thing?

Domestic Financial Institutions handled the role. Backed by enormous capital, they bought up every kind of asset and stocked each shop — or rather, each stock. Programs tracked indices, futures, news, and automatically kept the market alive.

The ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠community had borrowed the concept. People who posted constantly were called LPs.

Huh…

Things she'd never heard in ordinary life. Knowledge that was hard to apply even if you studied it. As it grew familiar, interest bloomed on its own. She wasn't just memorizing and moving on — she was starting to grasp how these things actually moved the market.

In exchange for serving as LPs, the institutions received certain privileges.

All kinds of benefits. Wait — they don't pay a single won in trading tax?

Back when she'd been stuck holding steel stocks, one question had burned in her mind. How were those guys dumping ten thousand shares at a time like it was nothing?

The mystery was finally solved.

If a retail investor bought ten million won in stock and sold it, they paid 0.25% in tax. Even selling at the same price, twenty-five thousand won vanished into thin air. Institutions paid nothing. With market-maker status as their foundation, they could knead stock prices however they liked.

And if you linked that to short selling—

She swallowed hard.

Only now, having glimpsed a fraction of how the market actually ran, did she understand why her senior had hammered short selling so relentlessly. It was frightening. Retail investors sat in the back of the bus arguing about where it was headed, when the truth was that the destination had always been up to the driver.

Now she understood why people said not to invest in Korean stocks. Why they kept screaming that the country was finished.

Hoo…

The stock market — the Korean stock market in particular — was harder than anything she had imagined.

"What, you're doing value investing? You really don't know a thing, do you."

She'd heard something similar before. Nothing her senior had said had been the slightest exaggeration. This was a retail investor's place in the market. Her confidence in making money from stocks shrank even further.

But not every retail trader lost money. Among the users of the Korean Stock Gallery—

—there were a handful of named legends. The author of the post she was reading, LeadingDeadCatBounce, was one of them.

He runs a Leading Room?

That nickname hadn't been chosen at random. A Leading Room — a group chat that gathered stock investors, where the admin pointed out which stocks would rise, for a modest fee.

She clenched her teeth.

Most of them were scams. Even her father, who never talked about stocks, had specifically warned her to stay away from Leading Rooms.

There really are a lot of lunatics out there.

His win rate was strong. His reputation inside the community ran deep. A portion of the users practically worshipped him like a god. If easy money were on the table, anyone would be tempted.

Even so, she would refuse.

Stocks are something you do with your own thinking.

Not money — a dream. To grow into a real trader, leaning entirely on someone else would never be enough.

She wanted to generate returns herself. Not one or two lucky accidents — real ability.

Sonik-jwa!

Another named legend. Once a day, after the market closed, he posted his results.

Profit verification — proof of exactly how much money he'd pulled from the market that day. Under normal circumstances it would be nothing but bragging. But when it continued day after day after day—

Wow… his seed was only 500,000 won at the start.

—it couldn't help but inspire a special kind of awe. And she wasn't the only one captivated by his returns.

A kind of following had formed. His staggering returns were the talk of the board every single day. She wanted to become someone like that — a trader who put up numbers that made other people's jaws drop.

What stocks did he even buy?

It wasn't that she wanted tips the way people did from a Leading Room. If she could see his trade log, she might be able to use it as a reference — which stocks he'd bought, and with what reasoning. She searched the board, and sure enough, related threads already existed.

Oddly enough, it was a stock she knew. And she knew someone who traded it, too.

Donghae Steel? No way…

It was probably just paranoia.