The Returns Could Be Better
"Dad."
"Mm?"
Seoha edged closer to Jang Youngmin's side.
"Do I, um... have a bank account?"
Youngmin stopped mid-step.
"A bank account?"
"Yes. One with my name on it."
He looked down at his daughter for a moment. It was an odd question, out of nowhere like this.
Still, he answered right away.
"Of course you do."
Exactly the answer she'd expected. Seoha gave a small nod.
Thought so.
Apparently there was a savings account set aside somewhere to collect her New Year's money and allowance.
"How much is in it?"
This time, Youngmin's expression shifted slightly.
"Why the sudden interest?"
Seoha pointed at the display board she'd been reading moments before.
"Look over there — even the same kind of fish all have names and numbers."
"So?"
"They're managed separately, and everything gets recorded."
"Mm-hm."
"So I was wondering if there's anything managed under my name too."
Youngmin glanced once at the display board, then looked back down at his daughter.
And then he burst out laughing.
"Haha, Seoha, you've got a real head for economics. You really are your father's daughter."
He resumed walking at a leisurely pace as he spoke, and Seoha fell in step beside him naturally.
"You don't just have a bank account, Seoha."
Her head snapped up.
"I don't?"
"There's a trust, too."
"A trust?"
"Yeah."
Now that one I didn't see coming.
So this was what it meant to be a chaebol granddaughter. A trust, at five years old?
Youngmin chose his words carefully, as if gauging exactly how much she could follow.
"Do you know what a trust is? Simply put, ever since you were born, there's been property set aside under your name. You're not old enough to manage it yourself yet, so it's entrusted to professionals and being managed for you."
Seoha blinked once. That couldn't be some trivial sum.
"Who manages it?"
"People who do it professionally."
"You, Dad?"
"Dad keeps an eye on it, but he doesn't manage it directly."
Seoha's father, Jang Youngmin — the man who headed up the financial arm of Haewon Group.
If the sum was big enough for Dad to check on it personally... Seoha's expectations crept a little higher.
She quietly tried to estimate the amount. It probably wasn't at the stage of serious gifting yet. Even for the Haewon family, handing over tens of millions of dollars' worth to a five-year-old would be far too soon...
"So if you add it all up, how much is there?"
Youngmin answered as if it were nothing.
"At the latest valuation? Around 3.3 billion won."
Seoha's feet stopped on their own.
"Seoha?"
"...Three point three billion?"
"Yep."
3.3 billion won. Wow. That's chaebol scale for you.
And here she'd thought it was just a New Year's money account. No wait — was it New Year's money?
Yeah, no. Even from all the relatives combined, that was far too big to be holiday pocket money.
Considering the size of Haewon Group, it wasn't an absurd sum by any stretch... but at this level, wouldn't she make the newspaper's Child Stock-King Rankings or something?
And there was a good chance Seoha wasn't the only one who'd received it. The grandchildren of Haewon Group — fourth-generation chaebol heirs, all of them...
So I really am a gold spoon.
Seoha marveled inwardly.
But what mattered most was something else entirely.
Seed money... I have seed money?
Still not fully rid of her petty-middle-class instincts, Seoha had only been bracing herself for holiday pocket money — a 'mere' few tens of millions of won. Even while relearning the ways of the world through financial papers and the news, she'd never dared hope for this part.
The year was 2006.
And that mattered enormously. Because right around the corner came the worst economic catastrophe of the twenty-first century — the Lehman Brothers collapse.
The things that would rise, the things that would fall, and the crash that would unfold a few years from now.
If she could call every single one of them like a marksman, just how astronomical a return could she pull off?
Better still, her father was the de facto head of Haewon's entire financial division.
Which meant there would be no shortage of finance experts to help her!
While Seoha was still reeling from the fortune that had just dropped into her lap—
"What's wrong?"
Youngmin asked.
"More than you expected?"
Seoha nodded honestly.
"Yes."
Of course it is, Dad! ...Ugh, spending too much time with Dad is rotting my sense of humor. 'Dang-geun Bbat-ta'? Really...
Seoha wrinkled her nose slightly, and Youngmin chuckled and ruffled her hair as though she were the cutest thing alive.
"I set up a decent amount for all three of you. You'll need it for things when you're older."
All three...
Combined... 10 billion won? If she just dumped the whole thing into put options when Lehman fell—
Seoha's mind spun at full speed, then ground to a halt. Her money couldn't move without her parents' approval anyway.
"That 3.3 billion isn't all sitting in the bank account, is it?"
"Obviously not."
"Then what's in it, and how much?"
Youngmin didn't answer right away this time.
"That curious about it?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
Seoha went quiet for a moment.
If she said because I want to invest it — the standard adult reaction would be the textbook one:
'Haha, where did this little peanut pick all that up? What a card.'
And Dad?
He wouldn't laugh at her, no. But she'd be in for a patient, carefully calibrated lecture on why a child her age shouldn't be touching investments yet.
Naturally. No one alive would believe a six-year-old could grasp the labyrinthine world of finance.
Still, she had to know exactly what was in that account. Cash weighting, where the equities sat, the split between bonds and hard assets — without that, nothing she wanted to do would be possible.
But she judged she couldn't turn Dad's heart in a single conversation, so Seoha just pushed out her lower lip and—
"Just 'cause."
—was all she said.
A few days after the aquarium trip, Seoha finished dinner and slipped into Jang Youngmin's study.
At the aquarium, Dad had promised to show her the thing they'd talked about.
On one corner of the wide desk sat a slim document folder that was never there on ordinary days, and when Seoha came close, Youngmin slid it across to her without a word of explanation.
"You asked to see it."
"This is mine?"
"Yep."
Seoha skipped the sofa entirely and pulled the desk chair straight out to sit down.
Printed across the top of the very first page was a familiar three-syllable name.
JANG SEOHA
Below it sprawled a dense thicket of letters and numbers — account numbers, trust designations, valuation reference dates — none of which would have held much entertainment value for a five-year-old.
"Ask if there's anything you don't understand."
Youngmin said it with a suppressed chuckle, finding his daughter's earnest little frown of concentration adorable.
"Okay."
She turned the first page, and the first thing to catch her eye was the total appraised value.
Approximately 3.3 billion won.
She'd already heard the number at the aquarium, so nothing about it was new — but hearing it from her father's mouth and seeing it confirmed on a document bearing her own name felt subtly, unmistakably different.
Youngmin hadn't been joking and she hadn't misheard. There really existed, under the legal name of one Jang Seoha, property worth 3.3 billion won.
It's real.
Her gaze slid quickly down below the total.
Deposits and cash-equivalent assets came to roughly 1.1 billion won; government, municipal, and high-grade corporate bonds around 1 billion. Another 700 million or so was parked in short-term money market products and bond funds.
The remaining 500-odd million was spread across domestic and overseas equities — and those, too, were mostly large caps whose names she recognized, or relatively low-volatility holdings.
The direction was obvious at a glance.
Congruently conservative.
Less a portfolio built to grow the money big, and more one built so that no ordinary mishap could make a serious dent in the principal — the assets scattered across a dozen hiding places. Equities were technically included, but only as a sliver of the whole; the rest was overwhelmingly in comparatively safe things like deposits and bonds.
Turning to the next page, Seoha tapped one line item with her finger.
"What's this one?"
"This? Short-term money market products."
"How's that different from a savings deposit?"
"A little different."
Youngmin chose his words carefully again, as if probing how far she could follow.
"Very simply — it's money you don't need right now, but don't want locked up for the long haul either. So you park it somewhere short-term and squeeze out whatever return you can."
"And this one?"
This time it was a line reading bonds.
"Those are bonds, young lady."
"So it's money we lent to the places written here?"
Youngmin's eyebrows rose a fraction.
"If you understand it that way, you're roughly right."
Seoha's eyes dropped back to the paper.
Each asset was annotated with acquisition dates, appraised values, rates of return — and taken as a whole, the returns were hard to call impressive.
Boring. Far more boring than she'd expected, honestly.
By risk-hedging standards, it would no doubt earn glowing reviews. A rock-solid portfolio. With returns scraping the floor...
And this whole portfolio gets cut in half the moment 2008 rolls around, anyway.
Well — time does solve everything. There'd be some loss of principal along the way, but quality stocks climb to the heavens once enough years pass.
Apple's market cap is what, 70 billion dollars right now?
That was only because the iPhone hadn't launched yet. Microsoft was still under a measly 300 billion.
And within the next twenty years, both would rise by dozens of times at minimum.
Ultra-large-cap blue chips — the safest bets on the board, no less.
"It hasn't really grown much, has it."
Youngmin let out an awkward laugh. Did this shrewd little miss actually understand what she was saying just now?
"You're not wrong."
He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms.
"Making money isn't the first priority with this fund. You're still young, so for now the important thing is keeping your assets safe."
Seoha nodded obediently at that.
She could understand why there'd be no reason to put a five-year-old daughter's money into aggressive play. It wasn't money that needed to chase high returns at the cost of accepting losses, and from a parent's perspective there was simply no call for it.
Especially when those parents were third-generation chaebol — needless to say.