Then Just Short It
The office was already a little noisy before I even made it in.
"So what did I tell you? I said this thing was definitely going up, didn't I?"
Assistant Manager Ryu sat perched on the edge of a desk, talking, while Section Chief Kim laughed beside him, big and booming. Half the floor had drifted over to the Facilities team to join in.
"Hahaha! Thanks to our Assistant Manager Ryu, I actually made some money. You're the best, seriously!"
"Assistant Manager Ryu, any idea what the next one to run might be?"
The moment I walked up to Ryu, the people who'd been carrying on smiled and scattered, and I offered him a greeting.
"Assistant Manager Ryu. It's been a while."
"Ah! Manager Chae... no, wait. I ought to be calling you Assistant Manager Chae now, shouldn't I?"
"..."
Manager was simply what our company called its rank-and-file staff, and there was no way Assistant Manager Ryu didn't know it. The night before the send-off dinner for his paternity leave had been the dinner celebrating my own promotion.
Picks a fight the second he shows up.
A spike of irritation shot through me. Then I pictured the three hundred and eighty million won sitting in my account, and just like that the anger drained away, as if it had never been real.
Right. People can be like that sometimes.
I smiled and let it pass.
"I'll help you with the handover this morning. How's your wife?"
When I brushed the jab aside as if it were nothing, Ryu faltered for the briefest moment. Then the routine courtesy lit him up, and he pulled out his phone and thrust it at me.
"Here, look. Cute, right?"
"Oh... she's adorable!"
What he showed me was nothing but a photo of a baby.
"See? That's my daughter. Takes after her mom — look how bright those eyes are already."
Long after that, he still hadn't so much as started the handover. He just kept bragging about the baby, and since my hangover hadn't lifted either, I let it go. Assistant Manager Kim happened to arrive right then, and the three of us stepped out to the smoking area and fell into talk.
"Still, Park quit, and Ryu came back right on time. That's a real relief."
"Yes, I heard. Assistant Manager Park... he resigned after hitting it big in the market, didn't he?"
Of all the things the three of us could chew on, the easiest was Assistant Manager Park, who'd been on the same team.
"Yeah. I'm jealous, honestly. My stocks won't even go up..."
Ryu jumped on that at once.
"Assistant Manager Kim, shall I recommend a name for you?"
Assistant Manager Kim perked up and looked at him.
"Oh — that thing the Electrical team and the Architecture team have been losing their minds over? I heard everybody made money on the stock you pushed. What on earth have you been going around recommending?"
"Yes. Would you like to see? It's something I studied up on and bought while I was on leave."
At that, Ryu drew his chest up, proud as anything, and pulled up his brokerage account. The return I caught in a single glance was no modest figure.
Assistant Manager Kim's eyes went perfectly round.
"Th-thirty-six percent? Ryu, what is this? Where did you even find a name like that..."
Watching the shock land, Ryu grinned, pleased with himself.
"Hehehe. Truth is, it only rose a little over twelve percent. This one's triple-leveraged, so it climbs three times as hard and falls three times as hard."
"Th-three times on the way down..."
I'd never heard of such a thing, and the number was chilling. Assistant Manager Kim, who'd been staring at the ticker a moment ago with his eyes practically spinning, turned his head the instant he heard it could fall threefold.
"Ahem. Same as ever, Ryu. Bold to a fault. Heart of a beast."
That only wound him up.
"Hahaha! A man's got to have at least this much nerve, don't you think? The nest egg I put together when I got married, and every won my wife's saved since — I took all of it and I'm running it in there. Why don't you buy some yourself, Assistant Manager? This is China's Tesla. Tesla!"
"I... I don't really know Chinese stocks. And lately, with that Chinese flu or whatever — aren't they risky?"
Ryu stalled at the word flu, then pressed on.
"Ah... the Wuhan pneumonia? Sure, it dipped a little because of that, but the Chinese government poured money in and it was all recovered by February. If anything, I averaged down a bit and the profit got even bigger. The way I see it, it's nothing. If it drops, that's just a chance to buy more."
While the two of them talked, my mind was somewhere else.
That thing's going to fall.
Once, I wouldn't have known. After actually trading for a while, I could tell without a doubt. The icy prickle coming off that stock was unmistakable — the warning that arrives just before a crash.
Yeah. That's the feeling. The one you get right before something drops hard.
Just then Assistant Manager Kim hesitated.
"Ahem... in that case, could you maybe tell me the name? Leverage scares me, so just the regular shares. One to one."
Ryu swelled up at that, lifted his chin, and put on airs.
"Normally I get at least something in return before I tell people from other departments... hmm. What to do."
"Oh, come on, Ryu. We're both Facilities. Really?"
Ryu shot me a glance, then leaned in toward Assistant Manager Kim as if to whisper.
"I'm kidding. You're on the same Facilities team, so I'll just tell you—"
"Assistant Manager Kim. Don't buy it."
One sentence from me, and a sudden stillness settled over the smoking area.
"......"
"Assistant Manager Chae. What are you talking about?"
Damn. That slipped out on reflex.
The moment I saw Assistant Manager Kim about to buy a stock that was going to fall, the words to stop him had jumped out of me before I could catch them. Ryu was glaring, fierce, and Assistant Manager Kim had turned to me with a serious face.
I had no choice but to answer.
"That stock. I think it's going to drop. You'd be better off not buying it."
"...You really think so? Why?"
I felt every eye in the smoking area settle on me.
Architecture, Electrical — all of them holding their breath, listening.
Even the bookkeeper seemed to be watching, the same one I'd seen earlier stuck to Section Chief Kim and Assistant Manager Ryu, angling for a ticker.
"...I've got a bad feeling. I think it's going to fall."
"Puhahaha!"
Ryu wasn't the only one. Section Chief Kim, who'd been eavesdropping, let out a scoffing little snort, and the bookkeeper — busy carrying on with one of the women off to the side — giggled along.
The only face that went grave was Assistant Manager Kim's. Seeing it, Ryu stepped in close.
"Assistant Manager Chae, you think you can tear down someone else's choice with no real grounds, and without doing any of the work?"
"Yeah! We're making money on it right now!"
Section Chief Kim tossed that in from a little way off, and the smoking area dissolved into laughter. One by one, people started drifting over to Ryu's side, and somebody in the knot turned on me.
"Assistant Manager Chae, you might not know this, but when it comes to robots — robots alone — China is already ahead of the United States. Before long this company will be running a dark factory. They're right on the edge of semi-automation. You're still not going to buy?"
"He's right. Thanks to Assistant Manager Ryu's recommendation, I'm already up twenty percent."
The bookkeeper put a word in from the side, and then Ryu himself piled on.
"Assistant Manager Chae, a person can't go through life negative about everything. If you want to tear it down, come back with a solid basis. A basis. Isn't that right, Assistant Manager Kim?"
"Huh? Um..."
Ryu had thrown it back to him, but Assistant Manager Kim still looked undecided. Watching that, Ryu's face hardened. He turned his back and started for the office, tossing the words over his shoulder.
"Hahahaha!"
Ryu and the others went in on a wave of laughter, and before long the smoking area held no one but me and Assistant Manager Kim.
He was the first to speak.
"...Ahem. Assistant Manager Chae. Don't pay Ryu too much mind. He's always been like that."
"I'm fine."
I really was. My thoughts had already gone somewhere else.
He's not wrong, though. I could just short it.
A memory of something I'd seen on YouTube came back, perfectly clear.
I'd heard that American stocks, and overseas markets in general, were different from the Korean market. Most of them let you short individual names and bet directly on the fall.
Until now all I've done is ride the spikes and get out. Over and over.
If I went long when the chill wasn't there and short when it was, wouldn't that make me untouchable?
Scalping momentum names with it might be a stretch... but if I used it right...
Those rockets meant buying and selling by the second, so flipping into a short in the middle of a scalp would be hard. Knowing in advance which name was going to fall was another matter entirely.
Yeah. Just like Assistant Manager Ryu's stock.
I was still lost in it, wearing a serious face, when Assistant Manager Kim spoke.
"So... anyway. You said the feeling was bad, Assistant Manager Chae?"
"Ah? Yes. That's right."
"Bad how, exactly? Like back when Samsung Electronics was about to drop?"
"Well... something like that. I just had the sense it was going to fall."
I thought for a moment, then added one more line.
"Personally, I'm a lot more certain than I was about Samsung back then."
"Haaah..."
Assistant Manager Kim clutched his head, turned it over, and then said,
"Assistant Manager Chae, listen. I happen to think your instincts are really good."
"......"
"And I think it's going to fall too. The truth is, I saw the news."
"What news?"
He glanced left and right, then leaned in and dropped his voice to a whisper.
"...They say Samsung Electronics closed its factory in China. Because of the Chinese flu."
"They did?"
I hadn't known. Then again, this was Assistant Manager Kim, who combed the market articles and the online boards every morning. Of course his information was fast.
"Honestly, I wasn't sure enough myself. I've been stuck deciding whether to keep my Samsung or sell..."
He looked like he wanted to say something and couldn't quite commit to it. I had a fairly good idea what it was.
Are you sure it's going to fall?
I looked straight at him.
"Assistant Manager Kim."
"Yeah?"
"How about we short it together?"
I'm certain, Assistant Manager Kim.