The 10 Billion Won Wall Comes Crashing Down
“Huh? Deputy Kang. You're at work today?”
“Ah, yes. Gotta work hard.”
“Haha. With returns like yours, you could take the whole month off and nobody would say a word. Talk about passion. Well, fighting out there today too.”
“Yessir!”
After yesterday's overload, I'd diligently applied the medicine I picked up from the pharmacy and taken my supplements, and thankfully my nose was back to normal now.
Besides, skipping work just because I'd made some money? Unthinkable.
It wasn't like anyone else was watching—our Chairman himself had personally placed me in this seat.
My reputation was tied directly to the Chairman's honor, so I had to be all the more careful.
And besides, you should earn as much as you can while the earning's good.
There was no doubt about my olfactory ability. I had no idea how it came to exist, but its effect was undeniable.
Still, there was one thing I had to keep in mind.
I had to let go of any notion that this power would last forever.
It could vanish at any moment, without warning.
Just yesterday, it had cut out entirely when it overloaded, hadn't it?
I need to help Mom's diner too, and if possible I want to build Sis her own café.
These days I'd been scouting locations for Mom's shop, and the costs were turning out to be far steeper than I'd expected. No wonder small business owners had such a hard time.
Setting up Sis's café right next door would make for a perfect picture, too.
And in case anything went wrong, it was wise to keep a cushion of reserve funds.
Beyond all that, for the sake of my mom, my sister, and my own future, the more money I could sock away, the better…
“So here you are, you gut-wrecker.”
“…Excuse me?”
“You vicious creature. I don't care how good Korean food tastes—that was low. You dragged me along right after I'd already eaten and made me have budaejjigae. Twice.”
“Ah.”
“'Ah'? That's it? I gained weight because of you.”
My Deputy Yoo. A very, very good man.
What I'd said yesterday had been half a joke, but he'd actually come with me all the way to the budaejjigae place and eaten with me.
“Then lunch is on me today.”
“Heh heh. Maybe I'll get a salad, then. Gotta watch my figure.”
“Um… about that…”
I could not survive on grass. I'd have to buy the man a steak at least, for his trouble of worrying after me.
“No way. What is this? What's wrong with AS Bio!?”
“Those bastards, suddenly pulling this stunt?”
Just then, angry voices erupted from every direction around the floor.
“Section Chief, what's going on?”
“Hey, take a look at AS Bio right now. Look at that disaster.”
“Wha—!? What the—why has the price dropped like this?”
“The short sellers put up a sell wall. Ten billion won worth! They've gone all in on crushing it.”
The pre-market call auction.
It runs from 8:30 to 9:00, when the market opens.
No trades are executed during this window, but orders can be placed—and it's here that the opening price gets decided.
And someone had just erected a ten-billion-won sell wall right here, right now.
What else could it mean, throwing up a wall that size at this exact moment?
“Looks like they're dead set on driving the price down.”
“Seems so. It's basically a notice—anyone without the guts, stay away.”
The short sellers were sending a threat to the retail investors and trading outfits now swarming in: if you want the price up, smash through this first.
It was a strategy outfits often used when they wanted to slam a price down hard.
Faced with it, retail investors hesitate to enter, and the big players can't move in either.
“This stock's dead for the day.”
You could argue, why not just break through the wall? But for institutions, there was rarely any point. Stocks were a dime a dozen, and more often than not, throwing money at a ten-billion-won wall just left you caught underwater.
“No way to be sure it's even real short selling. It could just be a profit-taking wall. So if you charge in wrong, you're the one holding the bag.”
“Plenty of people in our own office are in it already, right?”
“Yep. Starting with me.”
“…Right.”
Until yesterday, AS Bio had been riding a beautiful uptrend.
That was probably exactly why the shorts had thrown up their wall.
Thank god I sold everything yesterday.
And yet—something strange was happening.
“Hm?”
My sense of smell had reacted to AS Bio, spreading a sweet, fragrant scent through the air.
Is this telling me to get in?
But with a ten-billion-won wall in place, entering now would be pointless.
Even pouring in every won I had, I couldn't topple a wall that size.
“Deputy, how much money would it take to wipe out a ten-billion-won sell wall?”
“At least ten billion, I'd say? The second someone tries to break it, the short sellers throw in their own capital to defend it. That's why nobody rushes it. Getting into something like this means convoluted risk management, and the amount's so big you'd have to pull leverage on top of it.”
!?
That was the moment.
The instant he said the word leverage, my sense of smell flared up, sharper and more intense than before.
“…”
I stared blankly at the leverage option displayed quietly on the side of my monitor.
“Utterly tireless, this one.”
In his office, Team Leader Oh munched on a sandwich, shaking his head at the thought of Kang Suho.
“Posts the greatest returns in company history yesterday, and he still shows up to work?”
A 25% return.
Traders were, surprisingly, a deeply conservative breed. Anyone who made 25% in a single day would disappear from the office for weeks, watching from the sidelines.
Get greedy, chase more money, and you'd more often than not give it all back.
“And yet he came in anyway. Which means he's genuinely afraid of nothing, doesn't it?”
Traders cannot afford to lose money.
No matter how good last month was, if this month ends in the red, the Risk Team comes down on you like a hammer.
But Kang Suho was different from ordinary traders.
However much money he burned, the top would cover it for him.
“That aside—how on earth is he doing it?”
No matter how many times he turned it over, the returns made no sense.
Could anyone really produce numbers like this on nothing but split-second scalping?
Even a finely tuned algorithm couldn't trade like that.
And without a single loss—every single trade, pure profit?
“This isn't something information alone can buy you.”
Fine, say he'd gotten advance word on Han-seong Steel or Geum-young Shipbuilding. But this wasn't something mere information could explain.
“What grounds, what secret does it take to pull off this insane rate of return?”
Even with the power to see the future—would that work? You'd need to scalp in one-second increments. By the time you glimpsed the future, the timing would have slipped away entirely.
“Whoa. What the—?”
“No way. Who is it? Who's charging in right now?!”
The commotion outside made Team Leader Oh frown.
He understood the urgency—the market had just opened—but wasn't this getting a little too loud?
“Why is everyone losing their minds out there? The market's open. People need to focus.”
“Team Leader, did you hear about AS Bio?”
“Hm? Oh. That ten-billion-won sell wall crowd? No. How many times has that kind of thing happened? Write it off as stepping in dog mess and go find somewhere else to make money.”
Short sellers deliberately erecting walls to toy with a stock was an everyday occurrence.
Apparently the traders caught underwater there were the ones raising hell.
“Well… someone just smashed through that ten-billion-won wall in a single move.”
“Wh-what did you say? In one hit?”
He hadn't even glanced at the stock, figuring there'd be nothing to see there all day with the shorts so determined to grind the price down.
“With nothing better to do, someone decided to break it?”
Breaking through a wall like that was an enormously dangerous play.
One misstep, and you might as well have thrown ten billion won straight into the dirt.
From here, there was no way to tell whether the wall was genuinely short-seller inventory or just piled-up sell orders.
“If it really is the shorts' holdings, then someone's just thrown down a challenge—sticking their chest out, daring them to come at it head-on.”
“So that's why everyone's going crazy?”
“Yes, sir. Watching a fight is the greatest entertainment in the world, no? Someone's about to crush the opponent who hung out a ten-billion-won sell wall—how could anyone look away? Worth placing a bet on top of it, honestly.”
Watching a fight.
That was exactly the right phrase.
Throwing up a ten-billion-won wall was a silent threat: nobody come near.
Sweeping that inventory away, openly and without apology, was a signal as clear as climbing into the ring.
For traders, it was nothing short of a dopamine bomb.
And they could even put money on the outcome.
Short the shorts if you thought the sellers would win; go long if you backed the challenger.
One after another, everyone started putting their stake on the table.
Of course, if that ten-billion-won wall had merely been ordinary profit-taking inventory, this whole operation would go down as one of history's most asinine blunders.
Either way, for the traders, it was a hell of a show.
“So what kind of lunatic picked this fight, anyway?”
When someone deliberately throws up a sell wall, no institution goes near it.
Not some unwritten gentlemen's agreement—it's simply that ninety-nine percent of the people who charge in eat the loss.
“Honestly. Some lunatic crawls out of the woodwork every other day.”
“You're not betting anything, Team Leader?”
“On what? Let them have their fun.”
Smirking, Team Leader Oh turned back to his monitor—then suddenly blinked hard, doubting his own eyes.
An odd notification had just come in.
MARGIN CALL — LEVERAGE REQUEST APPROVED
“A-advance payment on margin? What—what is this?”
Someone had requested leverage from the Risk Team.
When the money in a trader's own account ran short, they could ask the Risk Team to pull leverage, unlocking spending power far beyond their current balance.
Exactly like right now.
“Tw-t-twenty billion won?!”
And the amount was a full twenty billion.
From his current funds, someone had leveraged up to twenty billion won.
The problem was—ten billion of it had already been spent.
“What in the—what kind of absolute maniac…!”
Pulling twenty billion won in leverage without so much as consulting his team leader?
Team Leader Oh's fury shot straight to the top of his head—
…Kang Suho?
—and then rapidly cooled the instant he saw the name displayed beside it.
“What is he plotting this time? Scary man.”
Wait. But why would he need twenty billion won?
At the thought that flickered through his mind, he hurried to check what the money had actually bought.
“Ha—.”
The moment he pulled up the order record, the word maniac spilled out of Team Leader Oh's mouth on its own.
Kang Suho — BUY 500,000 shares — AS Bio
Sell wall: SMASHED
The lunatic who'd body-slammed a ten-billion-won sell wall without a shred of fear was none other than Kang Suho.
“But… there's still ten billion left.”
Could there be a bug planted in his office?
The instant the thought finished forming, Kang Suho executed yet another trade with the remaining ten billion.
Kang Suho — BUY 1,000,000 shares — AS Bio
!?
Outside, the shouting had grown far louder than before.
“Hey—it broke!!”
“No way. He dumped another ten billion on top of it?!”
“What kind of lunatic IS this guy?”
“Price is climbing—get in NOW before you miss the limit-up!”
The traders scrambled to chase the surging price.
Team Leader Oh's hands, meanwhile, were sweating so badly the mouse kept slipping out of his grip.
“…”
Did the teammates out there, screaming into their phones and hammering their orders, have any idea?
That the lunatic who had just obliterated that sell wall was sitting in the seat right beside them.