Money Copy
The stock market's three-second rule.
It was a trading method that actually existed.
Full-time investors do this a lot.
When they needed immediate returns, those investors would take on the risk and leap straight into the fire.
—The ant has been slain!
Enemy double kill!
Of course it couldn't be easy. A stock that had surged 5% would drop back to 2%. The moment the ants swarmed in and clung on, the institutions or the manipulators would take their profits. In crude terms, the ants got bag-held.
If this were easy, why would anyone bother with a day job?
On a seed of ten million won, just one +30% hit a month meant three million. Literally money copying itself. If the seed were larger, or if leverage entered the picture? Making tens or hundreds of millions was no dream at all.
In theory, that is.
—The institutions are massacring them!
The foreigners are going berserk!
Ninety-five percent of retail investors lose money. There was a statistical reason it always ended that way.
When it drops, you get scared shitless.
Why are they selling? There has to be a reason. Things that had been invisible while hope was swelling finally came into view.
TwinBalls Financial Statements
[Roughly the situation after Rumble's ult is down.jpg]
Take the financial statements, for example. Looking late at the report on the company's management state made you go oh shit.
Operating profit is already wrecked for starters.
A company in the red. Small-scale on top of that. Market cap only a hundred billion. TwinHead Motors sat at five hundred billion. It was a shrimp trying to swallow a whale. You couldn't help thinking it: a company five times the size, and they're trying to acquire it? Does that even make sense?
—Buy order filled!
Buying whether it made sense or not—that was scalping. What I was doing right now wasn't day trading. It was riskier than that.
Scalping. Been a while.
Even day trading came in flavors. Hold for a few hours at the short end, a few days at the long end, then sell. Scalping, though—decide the fight in a few minutes at most, a few seconds at the least. Extreme trading.
It was only possible when volume exploded like this. What you needed wasn't corporate value—only attention.
If the communities are already screaming about it, that says everything.
Currently the hottest stock in Korea. Not Samsung Electronics, not SK Hynix—this TwinBalls right here.
—Manipulator has slain the Institution!
I hadn't bought on hope alone. In scalping you didn't look at financials. You watched the order book.
The manipulators looked like they were about to push it up.
The volume currently trading. From that movement you could roughly read the situation. Manipulators existed—groups that had bought the stock in bulk, separate from institutions and foreigners.
People who didn't know, who didn't think, got lucky and ate. But if you knew properly and responded—
The chart clearly had manipulators on it.
—you could eat by necessity, not chance.
The manipulators accumulated the stock over a long period. Why? Because they had the information. Insider trading and every other method. TwinBalls was going to attempt a TwinHead Motors acquisition! When that kind of good news hit, the price had no choice but to spike. Then they poured gasoline on it. Even if institutions and foreigners dumped in bulk, the manipulators had the power to pull the price higher still.
—Manipulator has ended the foreigners' ant massacre!
They detonated the price. From the 2% drop it climbed all the way to the 10% VI trigger. But I was looking beyond that.
Institutions and foreigners sold at the open.
I knew their patterns too. Of course I did—I myself had once been in the institution and foreigner seats. Stocks that rose for no reason got profit-taken first. So they could dip briefly at the open, but—
—they figured it out late. Wait, is this a rising stock? That oh shit thought wasn't exclusive to ants.
Institutions and foreigners are human too.
People think alike. You buy, I buy, the price climbs. Program trading piles on and it rockets higher and higher into the sky.
—Sell order filled.
Twenty-eight percent. I locked in the profit right there. Beyond this point it became a bloodbath between profit-takers and the zombie horde charging for the daily 30% limit.
No reason to dive into that mess.
Watch the show and eat the rice cake. No need to risk for an extra 2%. To me, risk was that: seize the market participants' psychology and wring it to the limit.
How the price would move was obvious as daylight. Ants who hadn't seen the news yet would keep buying hard, but—
—The ant has been slain!
Enemy double kill!
Enemy triple kill!
Enemy quadra kill~!
—the fast-info manipulators, institutions, and foreigners dumped. In an instant it went from +30% to the −10% downside VI.
None of my business. I'd locked profit more than a minute earlier. Twenty-eight percent on 520,000. No—I'd used margin too. Averaged down when foreigners and institutions pressed the price once.
The result: I sucked it dry, sweet as hell. So sweet my teeth were rotting.
Kyaa~ Right now I should be taking a drag of a cigar and wetting my throat with whiskey.
It could elevate the mood sky-high. Enjoy the feeling that I was the greatest in the world. Even so, only about 500,000. Margin or not, 1.25 million. The seed was so small the take was small too, but—
If I'd had 500 million, I'd have eaten real juicy.
It wasn't a fixed amount. It scaled with total capital. The bigger the seed, the bigger the haul. That roughly 500,000. Repeat this kind of short-term trading and hitting the hundreds of millions was purely a matter of time.
Suppose you compound money like that. The tax office will definitely come investigate.
The problem was that it was realistically impossible. Even with the ability, a society where you couldn't realize it—truly a shame. No, it wasn't even what I wanted. Simply made a lot of money? A flimsy lottery-like story couldn't move the public's heart.
I need to make tens of thousands—no, hundreds of millions of people move on a single word from me.
In the stock market that was critical. When a famous person bought, a premium often attached to the price. Classic examples: Warren Buffett. And Elon Musk. That lunatic Mars-obsessed bastard could take a shit on Twitter and every interpretation under the sun would stick.
That was real. I wanted that kind of influence. I wanted to knead the stock market to my taste even more than in my previous life.
For that—
I had to create a myth. Not some half-assed success story, but an epic grand enough that even a kid who didn't know a single Korean character on the other side of the planet would gasp in admiration. I had plenty of time for it. And while I was at it, I'd cultivate followers too.
I checked out a place with good water. Ten minutes ago I couldn't even have dreamed of joining, but—
I copied money, after all.
The cash was ready. Time was free. No reason not to go. For the fun of it, if nothing else. How many pathetic bastards would be strutting around calling themselves seniors?
"Can't drink?"
"I'm sorry, sunbae……."
"You don't have to~ Only the people who want to drink, and anyone who can't handle their liquor can have soft drinks."
""Yes~!""
Contrary to expectations, nothing interesting happened. The freshman welcome party unfolded in an atmosphere that was far too wholesome.
Kids these days don't know how to get properly alcohol-soaked.
You had to drink until you were about to die before you could say you'd really drunk somewhere. What was this, giving free passes to people who didn't want to drink? The world had gotten a lot nicer. In my day you just drank first. You had to get properly wasted and turn into a dog once before you understood an animal's heart.
"You're the top freshman?"
"Top student, oh~!"
"Looks like that and studies well too? Total cheat character. Take a shot."
"Thinking about any clubs?"
Separate from the world getting better, there was no shortage of seniors on the make. Eyes inevitably gathered at the end of the table.
Face is pretty decent.
A girl. A pretty girl at that. Looking was instinct engraved in male DNA. And she was smart on top of it. Economics department top student. She had pride about it; her neck was stiff the other way.
The milk cartons are pretty nice too.
In stock terms, a growth stock. If future value looked promising, it was worth considering a value play. But the world was never that simple. The CEO's ability and character were also factors.
"I came to school to study."
"No, that's not what I—"
"I'm grateful for the excessive interest, but I plan to avoid these gatherings as much as possible going forward."
Pretty-girl special: massive delusion of grandeur. From birth she'd only ever received goodwill.
Her head's empty as hell.
Whether it was overflowing self-love or zero sense of reality, either way she wasn't fully grown. Even so—
"Right, university is a place you come to study!"
"If I'd locked in like that in first year my GPA would've been fine."
"Real 'the ones who make it, make it.' Pretty, studies well, and her mindset is sharp."
"The oppas were being too pushy, right?"
Republic of Korea. A country where women could have zero manners. The buffalos rushed in one after another to shield her.
She's done for, she's done for.
A pity. Crabs side with crabs—female seniors flocked over and shoved the male seniors aside.
"Well done, well done!"
"Those idiots only get it when you draw the line like this."
"You know how childish guys are, right?"
Probably. She'd been pretty enough to draw checks, and now she had no interest in men?
Paper society is always like that.
An immutable law that didn't change with the era. Rock, paper, or scissors—whatever.
"But why do you study so hard?"
"Yeah, yeah!"
"I have a goal."
""A goal?""
"After graduation I'm going to get a job as a securities firm trader. And I want my ability recognized."
"Whoa, trader~!"
"From what graduates say, that one's insanely tough……."
There was something that couldn't be. Listening quietly, it seemed she had ambitions in the securities industry.
Our fund always had one of those empty-headed bitches too.
When you handled HR, they showed up. Bitches who thought they were different. They loved getting hired, but the hiring purpose was basically decorative flower. You do work? You know how to make money? I never expected shit. Just raise the staff's adrenaline with that pretty face and body. Not a single penny of money would be entrusted to a human with high ideals and zero ability. That was the cold judgment of a CEO.
One problem, though.
"So even a dumb bitch like that is going around claiming she'll be a trader."
I had let it slip out of my mouth.