2 p.m.
In the stock market, 2 p.m. is called the ‘cursed hour’.
It is when the day-trading crowd realizes the morning’s gains and gets out, and when office-worker ants, buried in work, close their MTS (mobile trading system).
So a name that has been surging often runs out of strength at exactly this hour, sprouts an upper wick, and falls.
But.
EcoFree Materials was different today.
[Current price: 57,200 won (+29.85%)]
[Bid volume: 3,500,000 shares]
Far from falling, it looked ready to punch through the ceiling with even greater force.
The sell side of the order book had run dry.
The moment someone put up even a single share, the waiting buy volume snatched it away like a pack of starving hyenas.
And at last.
Clunk.
A sound like a heavy vault door swinging shut seemed to ring in his ears.
[Price limit reached]
2:15 p.m.
EcoFree Materials had finally locked the limit-up door.
From an opening price of 43,000 won to 57,200.
+58% against the offering price.
+33% against the opening price.
A perfect victory in which madness swallowed reason.
Taeseong took his hand off the mouse.
His palm was damp with sweat.
Slowly, very slowly, he steadied his breathing and checked the managed-fund balance at the bottom of his monitor.
[Total valuation: 3,215,000,000 won]
“Three point two billion......”
His breath caught.
He had burned 2.5 billion that morning.
And in barely five hours, 700 million had grown out of it.
At the incentive rate raised to 15%, over 100 million won would be coming to him.
100 million won, earned in the time it took to eat lunch and drink a cup of coffee.
It did not feel real.
The numbers on his monitor felt like cyber money.
‘Hoo......’
Taeseong stood up to calm a heart that felt ready to burst.
The trading room was sunk in a curious silence.
The strange phenomenon of a limit-up with no cheering.
The reason was simple.
In this room, only two people had bought EcoFree Materials.
“I’ll step out to the restroom.”
Managing his expression as best he could, Taeseong left the office.
His steps down the corridor felt like walking on clouds.
The moment he reached the restroom he went into the innermost stall and locked the door.
Then he put the lid down on the toilet and sank onto it.
There was no mirror, but he could see it.
How his face must be twisted with euphoria right now.
“Mmph!”
Taeseong bit down on his fist.
So the sound would not leak out.
But there was no stopping the laughter and the shouting bursting out of him.
“Hnngh! Kkhh! I did it! Fuck, I did it!”
Tears squeezed out of his eyes.
Five years of humiliation flashed past like a panorama.
Dismissed for being fat, mocked for having no results, eating with his head down at team dinners.
Department Head Park Geonil’s contemptuous looks.
Manager Jeong’s sneering.
He had ground every bit of it under this one number.
3.2 billion won.
Taeseong no longer needed to walk on eggshells for anyone.
If anything, they were the ones who would have to walk on eggshells for him.
After laughing in ragged gasps for a long while, Taeseong took a deep breath and straightened his tie.
It was time to go back to being the cold trader Kim Taeseong.
He washed his face with cold water at the sink and cooled his flushed cheeks.
The man in the mirror glared back at him.
A predator stood there, jawline gone respectably sharp, eyes alive.
***
Back at his desk, an internal messenger alert was blinking in the corner of his monitor.
Sender: Kang Hyeona.
[Kang Hyeona: Assistant Manager! Assistant Manager! My hands are shaking so hard I can barely type.]
[Kang Hyeona: A limit-up...... an actual limit-up! My return this time is incredible!]
[Kang Hyeona: ♥♥♥♥♥]
Taeseong found himself grinning.
Her excitement came through the text intact.
The funds allocated to a junior trader were small compared with a senior’s, but they were still in the hundreds of millions.
Making a 30% return on that money in a single day meant her incentive would obviously be head and shoulders above her peers’.
[Kim Taeseong: Congratulations, Hyeona. What did I say? That I’d get you a designer bag out of it.]
[Kang Hyeona: I want to bow in your direction, honestly. I’m so glad I trusted you. My heart nearly burst pressing that buy button while everyone was calling it insane!]
[Kim Taeseong: That’s all thanks to you being brave enough to follow me.]
[Kang Hyeona: Shh! But I think we need to manage our faces. The mood over here is...... not a joke.]
Hyeona was right.
The mood in the office was a funeral parlor.
The seat behind Taeseong in particular, Assistant Manager Seong Gihyeon’s, was as cold as a freezer.
He sat clutching his head, glaring at his monitor.
Secondary-battery-related names, blue in the face, were up on his screen.
EcoFree Materials’ listing had sucked up all the money in the sector, and the existing secondary-battery names had been slammed.
“No, does this make any sense?”
Assistant Manager Seong could not hold it in and slammed his desk.
“The earnings are trash and it goes limit-up? Operating profit halved and the market cap gets pumped like this? Is this a stock market or Kangwon Land?”
His voice was steeped in anger, indignation, and thick jealousy.
He had been one of the loudest to sneer that morning when Taeseong bought EcoFree Materials.
The name he had mocked — ‘who’d buy that’, ‘it’s a bomb’ — had gone limit-up as if to spite him, so he must have been sick with envy.
More than the defeat of being proved wrong, the fact that the ‘pig, Assistant Manager Kim’ he had looked down on was sitting on a pile of money must have been harder to bear.
“Hey, Assistant Manager Seong. Keep it down. The Department Head is in a foul mood as it is.”
Manager Jeong shot him a warning look and reined him in.
Department Head Park Geonil had shut himself in his office and was not coming out.
He was no doubt racking his brain for an excuse to report to Executive Director Han, or else stewing alone over Taeseong’s return.
‘Serves them right.’
Taeseong enjoyed their misfortune.
They could call him a broken human being if they liked.
Compared with the humiliation they had handed him over five years, this was nothing.
Just then.
The phone in his pocket buzzed briefly.
A Wopora alert.
Now that it had settled at the limit, was it time for the ‘sell’ signal?
Normally, with a runner like this, the textbook was to sell before the limit broke, or the moment it hit.
Because it might open with a gap down tomorrow.
Taeseong discreetly checked his phone.
[Warning: Do not get off yet.]
An unexpected message.
[Over the weekend, madness will spread like an epidemic by word of mouth.]
[Reason rests on weekends; greed is amplified on weekends.]
[The target price is still far off. Hold tight.]
“......!”
Taeseong’s eyes flashed.
S-grade information.
The detail really was on another level.
It was not simply ‘it rises’ or ‘it falls’ — it saw through the psychology of the market’s participants.
‘Word of mouth over the weekend......’
Taeseong ran the simulation in his head.
Today was Friday.
After the close, the news would be papered over with ‘EcoFree Materials limit-up’.
[EcoFree Materials, written off as dead, makes a spectacular ascent]
[A victory for the ants who laughed at the institutions’ forecast]
Headlines like these would decorate the portal front pages.
And then the weekend.
People lie in the corners of their rooms and turn on their smartphones.
The YouTube algorithm will recommend stock channels with uncanny accuracy.
Stock YouTubers will make their thumbnails as inflammatory as possible to suck up views.
[The birth of the second EcoFree?]
[It’s not too late! How to attack Monday’s opening price]
[You didn’t buy this? You’re an idiot]
Envious ants.
The regret of the people who missed it.
The FOMO — Fear Of Missing Out — of ‘am I the only one not making money?’
That anxiety and greed ferments and amplifies over forty-eight weekend hours.
And at 9 a.m. Monday.
That condensed energy explodes as buy orders at the opening price.
‘Right. Selling at the limit would make me a fool.’
Selling right now was a 30% gain, but carrying it to Monday might mean a gap-open at the limit.
Taeseong withdrew the finger he had rested over the sell button.
This was not simple investing.
It was an enormous psychological game.
And through the cheat code called Wopora, Taeseong stood on the game designer’s side.
3:30 p.m.
The closing bell rang.
The limit did not break.
3,500,000 shares of bid volume propped the price up as solidly as concrete.
It was the moment Taeseong’s 700 million won of daily profit was locked in.
“Good work, everyone.”
Taeseong packed up earlier than usual.
He did not tiptoe around anybody.
Department Head Park opened his office door and started to say, “Assistant Manager Kim, today’s trading journal......”, then met Taeseong’s cool gaze and shut his mouth.
The company’s top ace, promised a 15% incentive.
Department Head Park no longer had grounds to keep him there at will.
“Have a good weekend.”
Taeseong gave a light bow and left the office.
His reflection in the elevator mirror was unfamiliar.
He was no longer the loser who a month ago had sighed at his slumped shoulders and protruding gut.
A man riding on a tiger’s back.
And a man taming that tiger.
Kim Taeseong now stood at the summit of the hunting ground.
***
The weekend.
Taeseong’s prediction — no, Wopora’s prophecy — was chillingly precise.
From Saturday morning, every economics news outlet, stock community, and YouTube channel was ablaze with talk of EcoFree Materials.
[EcoFree fails to double-and-limit but goes straight to limit-up...... what about Monday?]
[The stock the institutions abandoned, saved by the ants...... short sellers on alert]
[Stock community reactions: “Getting on at Monday’s open, no question vs it’s the dishwashing”]
Taeseong watched the reactions from a treadmill at the gym.
Speed 6.5.
Sweat dripped off him, but it was not hard.
Because watching the chat windows on YouTube stock channels was too much fun.
↳ Ugh...... I sat there debating whether to buy at the open yesterday and didn’t. I am an idiot.
↳ You’re not the only idiot. I didn’t buy either, damn it.
↳ Does it gap to the limit Monday? If I put in a market order now will it fill?
↳ The EcoFree legend begins. This is going to 100,000 won, guaranteed.
Greed was coming to a boil.
Those who regretted it wanted to make up for it; those who had watched wanted in.
Everyone was waiting for nothing but Monday’s open.
In their eyes there was no such thing as rational judgment.
There was only the madness of ‘I have to eat too’.
‘Doing well.’
Taeseong raised the treadmill speed to 7.0.
While people licked their lips, drunk on greed, Taeseong coolly calculated the next step.
Monday morning.
It would open with a gap up.
At least 15%, possibly more than 20%.
That would put his valuation past 4 billion won.
Should he get greedier from there, or hand his shares to the ants and exit gracefully?
‘Wopora will tell me.’
Taeseong tightened his grip on his phone.
He was not alone anymore.
The most powerful partner in the world was beside him.
“Sir! Are you not concentrating! Lift those legs higher!”
Coach Kang Pilgeun’s shout shattered Taeseong’s reverie.
Hellish training that did not rest even on weekends.
“Coach, I — huff, huff. I made a big score at work today. Couldn’t you let me off for one day?”
Taeseong panted it out like a joke.
But Kang Pilgeun did not so much as blink.
“Magnificent! But does a score burn your fat for you? Does it build your muscle? Health is the one thing money cannot buy! Run harder!”
“...... Devil.”
Taeseong laughed weakly and drove his legs again.
He was right.
Even with 3.2 billion won, he could not be a true winner in the body he had now.
Make money, and lose weight.
He would catch both rabbits — no, both tigers.