The Ant's Weapon

The ant is the weakest creature in the market.

Just like that famous line from the movie Operation.

Even the caliber of the weapons is different.

Seed money, privileges, information access.

Outmatched in every single category. Forced into a position where every trade is a losing trade.

But that doesn't mean you can't win.

Lately, things had definitely gotten rough.

The moment I entered Donghae Steel…

Additional buying pressure showed up. That bastard. The one monitoring my account. Thanks to that clueless idiot, the whole board got wrecked. The institutions wouldn't touch it.

It's fine.

I'd expected this much. I wasn't hunting a technical rebound for nothing.

Retail psychology was dull as ever. A caress-level bounce wasn't enough to erase the fear.

Think of it like this. The school bully who shakes you down and torments you every single day suddenly goes, "Hey, wanna hang out with me?"

From the nerd's perspective, you don't think, Oh, he wants to be friends. You think, What the hell is he scheming? Is he trying to shake me down for even more? That kind of terror is only natural.

The ants who'd been getting wrecked in a bear market felt the exact same way. A little bounce changed nothing.

No need to rush.

I'd planned a long game from the start. I tracked the flow slowly, watching every twitch of the order book. Until when? Until I got a bite.

When a stock is about to rise, there are always precursors.

Foreign capital flowing in, for instance. Of course, you couldn't take that at face value.

Retail loves it when foreigners buy… but what's visible on the surface doesn't mean much. There are a million ways to hide your volume.

1. Don't show it in real time.

2. Buy, then flip it back through an institution.

3. Have an institution buy through a foreign desk.

4. Fix it later with offline manual entries.

Four methods off the top of my head. Trusting the volume on your HTS was something only a stock newbie would do.

You have to read the flow.

But among the noise, some of it was real. The difference between a pro and an amateur was the ability to tell them apart.

The overall index was dropping. Money was being pulled out of the Korean market.

Foreign capital is exiting too.

And yet Donghae Steel was being bought. A modest green candle. Negligible in absolute terms — but relatively, a meaningful rebound.

Foreigners kept buying Donghae Steel.

They're scooping up the program dumps.

When the index falls, capital drains from every stock. Programs auto-sell everything. Foreign institutions know how to exploit that in reverse — quietly accumulating the names they actually want without tipping their hand.

Almost nobody would catch this. Hell, it might just be my own delusion.

That's how it always is.

Nothing in this world is 100%. For all I knew, the foreigners were running a fake-out. Even if the buying was real, the institutions might still refuse to move. Negative futures definitely existed.

The people in the discussion room were still trembling with fear. They only saw the negative.

Write something like that and even more people will cut their losses.

I fanned the flames. Stick and carrot. Used properly, shaking an entire discussion board was nothing. Over 90% of investors never think for themselves. If everyone else says so, it must be true.

Throw around a fancy term like "20-day moving average" and they swallow it whole.

They all thought they were different. That they'd go against the ants. Then one bear market later, they were swept up in the herd just like everyone else. That was why stocks were hard.

I'd laid every board I could.

There was fear in the market. It could go lower. But if that was enough to keep you from investing—

Then you don't deserve to call yourself an investor.

Investing was probability. Gathering intel, staring at the order book, combing through stock communities — all of it was just raising your odds. And then conviction. Believe it will go up. Don't cut. Hold the entire position.

Gap up, huh.

The day after next, the reaction finally came. The pre-market order book was moving strangely. It opened above the previous close. Objectively a good thing — but not to the fear-soaked ants.

To ants drowning in terror, it looked like one last escape hatch. All they'd seen was the decline.

The second the bell rang, the stop-losses hit. And just like that, the technical rebound the institutions had been craving and craving was finally set up.

Mm. Perfect.

Yesterday's trades and the day before had given me all the conviction I needed. This bounce was the real thing.

Institutional buying poured in. Foreigners kept buying for a second straight day. With nothing but buyers, the price ripped higher.

The problem is the exit timing.

That bastard trailing my buys. If he dumped the moment it started climbing, the fun would drain out of this real fast. After a full week of setup work, that would be pathetic.

Time to throw one more match on the fire at the finish line.

Haaah… look at this little shit.

Gaemi Investment Securities. Kim Deoksu had been watching one particular retail trader lately. The guy's returns over the past few months had been suspiciously good.

He'd been shadowing that ant. As a result, he'd pocketed some decently juicy profits himself.

This bastard's starting to catch on, isn't he. Ah, I'm better than this, though~

On the flip side, that ant wouldn't be having his usual day. The profits weren't flowing like normal. Hell, he was even taking losses. When things got like that, inexperienced retail traders got antsy. Experienced ones just took a break for a while — went out into the real world and blew off steam.

This guy was the former type. But he wasn't some idiot you could just casually farm either.

Not using margin, huh.

The secret to how this guy had grown his money so fast. Being good at stocks wasn't enough. You had to put something on the line. In everything — especially stocks — risk and return scaled together. Margin buying. Borrowing against cash or shares to buy more stock.

He doesn't have conviction yet. That must be it.

Most retail traders who made serious money used margin. Doubling your seed was an obvious play. With proportional risk. Meaning Donghae Steel, right now, didn't have enough merit to go all-in on margin.

He added a moderate amount. And sure enough, nothing resembling a meaningful rally materialized.

Ah, for fuck's…

Two days basically wasted. No big deal for a regular trader — fatal for an institutional one. You had to make money. Institutions lent traders enormous seed capital for one reason: to generate returns. Failing to produce was enough to get you fired.

Kim Deoksu had been under crushing pressure lately.

Still in the red this month.

He still hadn't recovered from the beating the foreigners had given him. He needed at least another 200 million just to break even. Immediate profits were urgent. And now even the retail trader he'd been counting on was stuck in the mud.

So even this bastard has stocks that don't work, huh.

Three days sitting on nothing but Donghae Steel. Heavy market cap — it didn't move easily. With penny stocks, a little buying from Deoksu himself was enough to get the price going. He'd buy, ride it up, dump, and pocket the difference. The combination of that guy's stock-picking eye and Deoksu's capital. And now he couldn't harvest those sweet little gains.

If it doesn't break out today, I'm just gonna…

The next day. Deoksu sat at his office desk with a sour face, turning it over in his mind. Other traders filled the floor — seniors, juniors, the usual. Their faces looked good. Making money, apparently. He was fretting over whether to jump ship to a different name when—

Oh!

It opened on a gap up. Of course. That fire-ant bastard had been clinging to this thing for a reason.

He was even adding more. Probably trying to punch through the bid wall and juice the rally.

Thanks, you little shit! Don't mind if I do~

Deoksu saw all of it. He fired his pre-loaded program and chased the buy immediately. Cash was gone. This time it was margin. The thing was clearly going up — time to bet big.

He got in before the guy could vacuum up the rest of the float. The latecomers piled in after — too late. He'd already swept the board clean. Foreigners and institutions were following right behind~

Retail flooded in like a swarm. This was the exact picture he'd been buying for. There was a reason he kept pocketing tens of percent every time.

He was waiting for volume to thin out so he could time the exit when—

An alert flashed out of nowhere. At that unbelievable news, Deoksu's brain short-circuited.

Wh— holy shit! Why the fuck is he dumping RIGHT NOW?!

Three days of holding. Full margin buy. And that was literally just now. Dumping at this price, the margin shares were basically breakeven. All it would do was wreck the upward momentum. Nearly 600 million won in stock hitting the market in one shot—

The ant ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠he'd been raising just bit his hand clean off.