Monday, November 20, 2023.
A new epidemic began spreading through the Yeouido financial district.
This disease is not transmitted by droplets or contact.
Instead it invades through the optic nerve by way of smartphone screens and the scarlet pillars of fire on an HTS, paralyzing the brain’s frontal lobe and overheating the amygdala.
Symptoms include heart palpitations, insomnia, and a severe sense of deprivation.
The name of the disease is ‘FOMO syndrome’.
The so-called ‘Fear Of Missing Out’.
The host of this epidemic was the monster rookie that had listed last Friday: ‘EcoFree Materials’.
“Gap to the limit! It gapped straight to the limit!”
9 a.m.
The instant the market opened, the Woojin Securities trading room was buried under a roar close to screaming.
EcoFree Materials, which had closed limit-up on Friday, had shot to the price ceiling from Monday’s opening price.
It had slammed the door without offering so much as a chance to buy.
[Current price: 74,300 won (+29.90%)]
[Bid volume: 8,000,000 shares]
A price suspended in midair.
A perfect solo run — impossible to buy into, with no reason to sell.
Taeseong quietly took a sip of lukewarm water from his tumbler in front of his monitor.
Friday’s close, 57,200 won.
Today’s opening price, 74,300 won.
He had only spent a weekend, and he had woken up to another quantum jump in his assets.
[Total valuation: 4,175,000,000 won]
“Four point one billion......”
A hollow laugh escaped Taeseong.
From 3.2 billion, he had blown past 4 billion in one stroke.
By now the numbers going up were frightening.
It felt like racing in a sports car whose speedometer had broken.
Wopora held the brakes, and Taeseong only had to buckle his belt tight and hang on — that was the race.
But unlike the fear-laced euphoria Taeseong felt, the other people in the office were feeling 100% pure pain.
The condition of Manager Jeong Hanjun, seated directly behind Taeseong, was especially severe.
“Damn it! Fuck! Why won’t it come down! Why!”
Manager Jeong clicked his mouse irritably and spat curses.
On Friday he had been debating a buy at the opening price and had chickened out at Department Head Park’s “it’s a bomb.”
And he had lost sleep all weekend, sick with envy.
‘I’ll go in when it gives a correction on Monday. Surely it won’t go limit-up two days running? Secondary batteries are finished.’
He had comforted himself with that and met the morning — and the result was a gap straight to the limit.
The loss of having missed his chance.
And jealousy that Assistant Manager Kim, calmly watching his chart up front, was raking in a fortune.
Those two feelings tangled together and scorched Manager Jeong’s insides black.
“Hey, Assistant Manager Kim.”
Manager Jeong could not hold it in and called out to him.
There were barbs in his voice.
“Yes, sir.”
“You...... you haven’t sold that yet, right?”
“No, sir. It’s locked at the limit, so there’s no reason to sell.”
“Huh, unbelievable. Impressive, truly impressive. Hey, but isn’t this a bit much? The earnings are trash and it’s limit-up two days in a row. Doesn’t this have a manipulation ring behind it? Shouldn’t the FSS come and investigate?”
Manager Jeong was being spiteful for the sake of it.
Taeseong replied flatly.
“There’s a saying that supply and demand is king. Once madness attaches itself, earnings are a later problem.”
“Madness? Right, madness. Everyone’s gone insane. But watch yourself, Assistant Manager Kim. They say the higher the mountain, the deeper the valley. Something like this can wipe you out in one shot. The moment the limit breaks it could slam straight to limit-down.”
It was closer to a curse than a caution.
But to Taeseong’s ear it sounded like nothing but a loser’s scream.
He snorted inwardly.
‘Thank you for your concern, but you needn’t worry about me. Worry about yourself, sir.’
Taeseong glanced at Manager Jeong’s portfolio, which he kept open in a corner of his monitor.
The shipping names he had bought following Department Head Park last week were still stuck at -15%, not even cut yet.
And in that state, giving pointers to a man earning 4 billion.
It was comedy of the highest order.
Even as the afternoon came, the limit showed no sign of breaking.
All of Yeouido was boiling over with EcoFree Materials.
At lunch hour, in the elevator, in the smoking room, in the cafeteria, it was nothing but that.
“Hey, did you see EcoFree Materials? Insane.”
“Some people are saying this clears 100,000 for sure.”
“Shouldn’t we buy even now? Should I go in at tomorrow’s open?”
“Come on, it’s risen too much. Doesn’t that scare you?”
“Scare me! Back when Saseong Electronics was at 80,000 we said it was expensive and didn’t buy, and then just watched it punch through 100,000. We can’t miss this one.”
The FOMO virus was propagating swiftly through the air, through speech, through the look in people’s eyes.
And Manager Jeong Hanjun, the host most vulnerable to that virus, was already entering the severe stage.
***
The next day, Tuesday, November 21.
In the aftermath of the previous day’s gap-to-limit, the order book was running hot before the Tuesday session even opened.
Expected execution price: opening up +15%.
Opening price expected at 85,000 won.
“Insane...... this is genuinely insane......”
Manager Jeong glared at his monitor with bloodshot eyes.
He should have bought yesterday.
Couldn’t buy because it gapped to the limit? No. He should have put in a buy order at the limit price and prayed.
Had he done that, how much would he have made from today’s gap-up alone?
He cursed his own indecision.
And turned the arrow of that anger back at Taeseong.
Even that dull Assistant Manager Kim bought it.
Even an amateur like that, investing on nothing but instinct, made billions.
What can’t I do?
9 a.m.
The open.
Opening price 86,000 won. (+15.75%)
The moment it started, the price stretched upward without hesitation.
88,000 won...... 90,000 won......
Once it broke 90,000, the buying grew fiercer still.
100,000 won.
The ‘round figure’ price zone, the so-called psychological resistance line, was coming into view.
“It’s going! It’s going to 100,000!”
“Whoa, it really is going to 100,000?”
Gasps broke out around the office.
Even Department Head Park Geonil was watching the screen with his mouth hanging open.
He had already regretted it a hundred times and envied Taeseong a thousand times inwardly, but pride kept him from showing it.
Manager Jeong was different, though.
He could not stand it any longer.
Reason was paralyzed, and greed alone ruled his brain.
‘I have to buy, even now.’
‘Once it breaks 100,000 there’s no overhead supply left. It just punches through the ceiling and flies.’
‘I have to eat what Assistant Manager Kim ate. No — I have to eat more than him.’
Lunch hour.
Taeseong was sitting in a corner seat at a sandwich shop.
Today’s menu: a chicken breast sandwich.
Sauce kept to a minimum, bread switched to whole wheat.
Taeseong’s current weight was 137kg.
Not gaining was a given; this was a desperate effort to lose more.
There was an irony in a man with 4 billion won in assets counting calories over an 8,000-won sandwich, but to Taeseong this mattered more.
He had earned money, but he had not yet earned a healthy body.
“Assistant Manager Kim.”
Just then, someone dropped into the seat across from Taeseong.
Manager Jeong.
His hands were empty; apparently he had not eaten. His eyes were hollow and his lips were parched.
“Ah, sir. Aren’t you eating?”
“Do I look like I can get food down right now? Hey, you’re still holding it, aren’t you?”
He went straight to the point.
Taeseong chewed his sandwich and nodded.
“Yes. Well...... a little.”
“A little, my foot. I saw it — you burned the whole 2.5 billion. It’s over 4 billion now, isn’t it? Must be nice. Huh? Must be very nice.”
The tone was sarcastic, but envy dripped from every word.
Manager Jeong tapped the table and leaned forward.
The posture of a man digging for confidential information.
“Hey, it’s just us, so be honest. How far do you see it going? Where’s your source? A trading room? An institutional tip?”
“There’s nothing like that. I told you, it’s instinct.”
“Ah, are you really going to be this stingy? Think how much I’ve looked after you since you joined. Tell your big brother, just quietly. What’s your target? 150,000? 200,000?”
Looked after him, my ass.
Taeseong swallowed a laugh of disbelief.
The man who used him as the meat-grilling shuttle at every team dinner and pushed his own mistakes onto him was trying to play big brother.
Taeseong set down his sandwich and looked at Manager Jeong seriously.
“Sir.”
“Yes, yes. Go on, say it.”
“I say this sincerely.”
Taeseong’s eyes settled into something cold.
“Right now it’s far too dangerous. This is holders’ territory. It’s a party among people like me who caught it at the bottom. Entering new at this point is suicide.”
“What? Suicide?”
“Yes. It’s already up more than double from the bottom. Going in here to eat more amounts to nothing but volunteering to do other people’s dishes. Do not buy it.”
That was Taeseong’s honest advice.
However detestable Manager Jeong was, he did not want to watch a teammate hug a bomb with company money and blow himself up.
And there was Wopora’s warning too.
‘Madness spreads like an epidemic.’
The end of an epidemic is either herd immunity or the death of the host.
The market right now was racing toward the latter.
But a powerful filter called greed had already been fitted over Manager Jeong’s brain.
Taeseong’s sincere advice reached his ear as something else entirely.
‘This pig of a man...... he wants to get rich alone.’
‘Scaring me off in case my buying drops the price? Keep everyone else out so he can gorge himself all the way to the top, is that it?’
‘I’ve got years more market experience than you, and you dare lecture me?’
Manager Jeong’s face flushed red.
His pride was wounded.
That a mere fifth-year assistant manager would lecture him, an eighth-year manager, about ‘suicide’.
He had made a little money and lost all sense of his place, apparently.
“Ha...... is that right? Dangerous, is it? Dishwashing, is it?”
Manager Jeong ground his teeth and rose from his seat.
“Thanks. Thanks very much for the advice. Aren’t you special, all by yourself.”
He walked out of the shop without looking back.
Taeseong watched him go and shook his head bitterly.
You throw a man a rope and he insists on jumping into hellfire on his own two feet — there is no stopping that.
***
The next day.
The moment the market opened, EcoFree Materials’ trading volume exploded again.
The price passed 95,000 won, then 98,000, 99,000......
The countdown to breaking 100,000 had begun.
The order book blinked madly.
Manager Jeong sat at his desk with his hands trembling.
The Woojin Securities corporate account order window was open in front of him.
His remaining available funds: 500 million won.
His last chance to make back the shipping losses and show Taeseong what was what.
If it broke 100,000 here, the road to 150,000 was a highway.
It had been that way with Saseong Electronics and with KG Life & Health too.
A stock price is momentum, at bottom.
Breaking 100,000 is the hard part; once through, it flies.
‘There’s no way Assistant Manager Kim is right. He just got lucky.’
‘The market’s momentum isn’t broken. Now is the chance.’
‘Just once. Let’s eat just once and get out.’
99,500 won.
99,800 won.
The sell wall was crumbling.
“It’s breaking...... it’s breaking......”
Break through the 100,000 line and the thing proves for itself that it can go higher still.
Manager Jeong muttered it like an incantation.
And finally.
[100,000 won.]
The instant a six-digit number printed on the screen.
“Let’s gooo!”
He shouted, close to a scream, and hammered the buy button.
[Buy order filled.]
The full 500 million won. Market buy.
Average price 100,500 won.
At the peak of a historic high, Manager Jeong climbed onto the tiger’s back.
And as if by a lie.
The moment he bought, the price kept shooting.
101,000 won...... 102,000 won...... 103,500 won!
By the close his final return printed at +3%.
Three percent of 500 million is 15,000,000 won.
He had made 15,000,000 won in minutes with a single click.
“You see that? You see?!”
Manager Jeong kicked back his chair, stood, and shouted toward Taeseong.
His face was flushed red with excitement.
“Assistant Manager Kim! Scared, were you? Dangerous? Suicide? Don’t make me laugh! I went in just now and I’m already up!”
He jabbed a finger at Taeseong with a triumphant expression.
“Stocks are momentum, momentum! There are places cowards will never reach in their whole lives! This is what a beast’s heart looks like, you fool!”
The other employees looked over in surprise, but Manager Jeong paid them no mind.
Right now he felt like the protagonist of the world.
The 4 billion won Taeseong had earned was invisible to him.
The only truth was the red light printed in his own account at this moment.
The rush of having proved Taeseong’s advice wrong, and himself right, sent a thrill through him.
Bzzt—
Just then, the phone in Taeseong’s pocket vibrated.
A Wopora alert.
[Warning: The end of the party is in sight.]
[Greed has peaked.]
[Prepare to sell.]
Taeseong slowly turned his head and looked at Manager Jeong.
When their eyes met, he carefully offered one last piece of advice.
“Sir. I recommend selling when the market opens tomorrow.”
“You idiot! Are you still spouting that coward nonsense? What, are you worried I’ll be left doing the dishes?”
“Well...... I’ve said my piece clearly. This is entirely your choice, sir.”
“Enough. Anyone free for a drink tonight?”
Manager Jeong cut Taeseong off mid-sentence and swept past the partition.
Taeseong clicked his tongue inwardly.
100,000 won.
An overheated round-figure zone by anyone’s reckoning.
Going full-size there was not courage.
It was a suicide signal sent by a brain pickled in dopamine.
‘So he’s volunteering to do the dishes after all......’
The dishwashing.
Slang for the late buyers who catch the volume when a manipulation ring or the early buyers unload at the peak.
Manager Jeong was currently making himself the finest dishwasher available for Taeseong’s shares.
At the very moment Manager Jeong was dancing and shouting “Let’s go to 150,000!”
Taeseong quietly shook his head and got ready to leave for the day.
‘I should sell the whole position sometime tomorrow morning.’
The finale of the brilliant fireworks display was approaching.