Just a Little — About 200 Trillion
"Ah, I had no idea. So you intended to take part in the investment yourself, Chairman."
"Wouldn't that be the obvious thing to do?"
"I didn't realize... That was shortsighted of me."
If he were merely lending the money, there would have been no need to analyze anything. Mobilize every scrap of intelligence the entire organization possessed, just because they might lose a paltry 200 billion won? Hardly.
Moments like these — when stock prices lurched and the market dissolved into chaos — were golden opportunities to make money. It had been the same during the last war between Venezuela and Guyana.
The problem this time was that nobody knew the cause or the reason behind the swings, which made it difficult to take positions in gold, commodities, or crude oil.
"It was rather interesting. After sending the money to Miss Oh Se-eun, I traced the flow of funds. A portion went to World Investment — that's the firm Miss Oh Se-eun and her colleagues built as a global network. Their main office is on Wall Street. In any case, she sent sixty percent of the investment capital to World Investment, and put the rest to work separately."
Jung Jinwoo's mouth fell open at Ko Yoon-seok's words.
"Y-you can track fund flows too?"
"Of course. How could one conduct global investment without knowing the trends in international capital movement?"
"To track U.S. fund flows, you'd need to be linked with the American government..."
"We do receive government assistance, but for real-time tracking there are specialized agencies as well."
Come to think of it, Ko Yoon-seok was right. Investing globally without watching the flow of capital would be no different from investing with your eyes closed.
"And where did she put the rest?"
The fact that Oh Se-eun had split the investment was what mattered.
"The remainder... she placed on the opposite position through a different route, at five-times leverage."
"What?"
"By our estimate, it came to about two-thirds of the amount she put into the reverse short position."
"Hah. Unbelievable..."
Jung Jinwoo shook his head, at a loss for words.
He'd thought she was recklessly going all-in on a five-times leveraged short in one direction. She'd been so confident, telling him to buy her with money — and all the while she'd placed an identical bet the other way, building herself a safety net.
"Miss Oh Se-eun is truly remarkable. She even put a fail-safe in place."
"What's remarkable about it? It's foolishness..."
If it had been Jung Jinwoo, he would have simply invested a third of the capital and left it at that.
"She's likely investing strategically. In this industry, succeeding at an investment is only half the game. Just as important is whether you're an investor who can move large sums of money with stability. That's what becomes your credit. That's what becomes your capacity. Keep the risk small, but take the fame and reputation large. Watch her. She'll go far."
Did he have to praise her that much?
Jinwoo felt a measure of relief that she wasn't as reckless as he'd thought — and, at the same time, a faint twinge of disappointment.
Oh Se-eun's words flickered through his mind.
In the end, that ship had sailed. No matter how badly she lost, she'd still be able to repay the 200 billion won she'd borrowed from him.
So why did he feel so disappointed?
He'd almost ended up with a twenty-three-year-old wife, after all.
"Don't tell me you're disappointed?"
"Ah, no. Of course not."
He was disappointed. Very disappointed.
That cute woman who snapped at him like a fresh, tart lemon every time she opened her mouth.
"In any case, that's one less thing to worry about. Shall we talk about our own business?"
"What did you have in mind?"
"How much capital can we deploy right now?"
"We have 735 trillion won in profit remaining from the last time we sold off the gold and commodities."
As expected, the precise figure came out the instant he asked. 735 trillion. Money that hadn't existed before. Even without it, an immense fortune was already piled up; they ate well and lived well without the slightest inconvenience. The JW companies scattered across the globe had no trouble conducting business either.
"Shall we put in about 300 trillion?"
"I beg your pardon?"
Ko Yoon-seok's eyes flew wide. Even after hearing it, his face said he couldn't quite believe it.
"That would cause an uproar. This is a qualitatively different matter from the last commodities incident. Even if we tried to hide, we couldn't. We'd have no choice but to surface."
"Then if we stay off the surface — how much would be possible?"
"Around 150 trillion... I believe that would be feasible."
Jung Jinwoo's face crumpled, unsatisfied.
"So 150 trillion means we can stay hidden in the background without being exposed?"
"Yes! We'll have to disperse it quite a bit, which will be a nuisance, but yes."
"Then put it in the same way Oh Se-eun did — a five-times leveraged reverse short."
They had thoroughly reviewed the materials Oh Se-eun had sent, and both Jung Jinwoo and Ko Yoon-seok had reached the same conclusion: what she had said had sufficient grounds.
To confirm it once more, they had fed everything into Oh Gong-tae's supercomputer and AI. The analysis came back similar. Another unexplained lurch in stock prices was forecast.
And this time, it wasn't only the artificial intelligence algorithms that were likely to panic. People would too.
Human beings, as a rule, understand and accept things once they know the reason. But when a decline repeats for reasons they cannot know — reasons that cannot be known — they feel fear.
The first drop had been five percent over ten minutes, and it had recovered immediately. The second had been six percent over ten minutes; a little slower than the first, but it had recovered just the same. If a third occurred — if this time the drop exceeded six percent — that would be more than enough to trigger a panic. People would stampede to dump every share they held.
Stocks were a psychological game through and through, were they not?
The great stock market crash of the twentieth century had its roots in a poor surrounding market environment, yes — but it had happened because people, seized by panic, sold their stocks one after another.
"The Chairman's scale is truly... whew... extraordinary."
"It's only 150 trillion."
"At five times leverage, that's 750 trillion. That's our country's entire annual budget. If the market drops just twenty percent, we make 150 trillion. If it drops forty percent, we make 300 trillion."
Ko Yoon-seok spoke with a faint tremor in his lips, as if the tension were getting to him.
"Vice Chairman, you ran any number of businesses with my father. You've made investments bigger than this. Why are you so nervous?"
"W-we've never made a short-term investment this dangerous. Your father preferred to invest in brick-and-mortar industries that were ninety-nine percent certain — gold mines, oil fields, rare-earth deposits. And even when it wasn't that kind of business, he wanted something with a building attached, or at the very least a copyright. Something tangible."
Ko Yoon-seok wet his parched lips and continued.
"In truth, even this surplus of 735 trillion is profit we were able to obtain because you created Gold Coin, Chairman. Compared to your father, you are incomparably bolder, and your speed is... in a different league entirely."
"I just go ahead and do it, that's all. And we still haven't confirmed whether this investment of mine is right or wrong."
"That's true enough... but even so... you really are extraordinary."
Ko Yoon-seok gazed at Jung Jinwoo as if genuinely moved.
Jung Jinwoo couldn't understand it. Investing about twenty percent of idle capital — 735 trillion won they'd raked in as easily as breathing — what was so extraordinary about that?
The 200 billion won invested with Oh Se-eun no longer seemed like something to worry about. Thanks to the safety net she'd put in place, she'd make a little if she profited and lose a little if she didn't.
Looked at a certain way, wasn't Oh Se-eun the true investor here?
His trust in her had risen that much higher. When she'd recklessly offered her own body as collateral, he'd been genuinely disappointed...
And, at the same time, a little thrilled.
In the small hours of the morning, determined to stay awake, he kept his eyes on the television and a spread of internet windows. All evening, Attorney Ko Yoon-seok had been dispersing the money across American and global investment firms.
150 trillion won. It was by no means a small sum. It was the annual budget of an underdeveloped nation.
He watched the news pouring in from around the world in real time — especially from Wall Street. There was no shortage of talk on the Street about the two days of lurching stock prices. Some people tried to pin the cause on reasons that were frankly absurd. Others dredged up the 2010 Flash Crash and told ordinary investors not to get shaken.
Will that actually work?
Anything connected to money had to be fast, or you took the loss. Even in a bank run, the people who reached the bank first withdrew their money intact; those who arrived late couldn't withdraw a cent, even though it was theirs.
The stock market was a psychological game, through and through. The idea of a "normal," "rational" price was nothing but an illusion. If it weren't, why would the phrase "Korea Discount" even exist? The same goods were bought dear and sold cheap in Korea.
He sent the message to Attorney Ko Yoon-seok and promptly collapsed into sleep. It had been a day spent in a whirlwind of activity late into the night. He was too exhausted to keep his eyes open.
"Whoa, did you see it yesterday?"
The moment he arrived at work, Ji Jeong-eun met him with a look of astonishment.
"See what? Why?"
"The American stock market yesterday — you didn't watch? It was chaos all night."
He'd been in such a rush to get to work that he hadn't even properly checked his phone. And that after going all-in with 150 trillion.
"What happened?"
"They say a Multi-Agent Panic hit last night. The U.S. stock market crashed, everyone dumped their shares... it was a madhouse. Did you know American stocks dropped more than thirty percent at one point?"
If it had dropped thirty percent, that meant a profit of around 225 trillion.
"That happened?"
"Manager, what are you? The world was turning upside down and you just slept through it like nothing was going on... I can't even."
What was there to be so incredulous about? Some people paced the floor over stock prices. Others quietly made money in their sleep.
A message arrived at once.
He could practically see Vice Chairman Ko Yoon-seok's stunned expression.
He turned on his computer and looked at the news. The fallout was beyond anything he'd imagined.
Retail investors, panicked by the inexplicable sell-off from stock-trading AIs, had thrown their shares on the market. Institutional investors had piled on, and even the panic-hedge portfolios had kicked in. At one point, the market had dropped more than thirty percent.
Circuit breakers — the emergency halt on trading during violent spikes or plunges — had tripped again and again, but they hadn't been able to stop the fall. Bank runs and dollar redemptions had followed, and the American securities district had descended into pandemonium.
The portal sites were drowning in articles.
Another message arrived with a chime.
Jerome Musso.
He'd sent Jerome the information, telling him it wasn't certain, to analyze it and decide whether to participate. This was the same Jerome who had tipped him off in advance about the war between Venezuela and Guyana.
There had been the thought of helping each other as friends, of course. But more importantly, Jerome's RCF analysis team had sent back feedback that Oh Se-eun's investment approach had an 82.18 percent probability of success. That was what had let Jung Jinwoo pull the trigger with peace of mind.
That was how it went.
Jung Jinwoo had another reason for bringing Jerome in.
If you predicted an event that occurred in the small hours and invested accordingly, the U.S. Treasury would open an investigation. He hadn't done anything illegal — but if someone had used a stock market crash to reap enormous profits, they would find some pretext or other, and they would not let it go.
But if Jerome — the man who held the American government and the Treasury in the palm of his hand — was a principal player? They would go through the motions of an investigation and then stop.
Naturally, a small fry like Jung Jinwoo, who'd put in a mere 100 billion dollars or so, would simply get buried in the noise.
On top of that, he'd given Jerome good information, gotten to see their analysis materials, and could look forward to scoring big together again in the future.
Another chime.
Lee Jinho of Saengsong. Jinwoo had merely leaked the information in passing — and it seemed he'd pulled in Number Five, even people from the other chaebol families.
At that moment, another message arrived.
Oh Se-eun.
"What?!"
A gasp of sheer disbelief burst out of him.
What? What kind of stunt was this... was she trying to swallow 200 billion and run?
No — maybe she was making a play to get herself tangled up with him, one way or another.