Wednesday, October 11, 2023.
Day three of the war.
The world trembled in fear, and the market was swept up in madness.
Overnight on the NYMEX (New York Mercantile Exchange), WTI (West Texas Intermediate) futures had spiked more than 4% from the previous session, breaking past the 86-dollar-a-barrel line.
With the Middle Eastern powder keg lit, black gold had begun to churn.
And that wave crossed the Pacific and came surging into Korea’s Yeouido financial district as an enormous tidal wave.
“Limit up! Heungbu Petroleum is locked at the limit!”
9:15 a.m.
Someone’s shout burst through the silence of Woojin Securities’ trading room.
Every trader’s gaze swung at once to the large status board.
Amid a falling market plastered in dark red, one vividly shining red arrow.
[Heungbu Petroleum: +29.98% (limit up)]
Millions of shares stacked up on the bid alone — a perfect ‘door slam’.
“Hoo......”
At the center of the commotion, Kim Taeseong quietly adjusted his glasses.
An unreal number was printed on his monitor screen.
[Name: Heungbu Petroleum]
[Valuation P&L: +365,000,000 won]
[Return: +60.5%]
The shares he had taken at Monday’s open had produced a return of over 60% in three days.
Victek too was posting a return in the 40s, staining his account red.
Only three days.
In just three days, the money Taeseong had earned was passing 500 million won.
‘Five hundred million.’
Taeseong swallowed dryly.
For the past five years, while everyone else chased jackpots and climbed onto surging stocks, Taeseong had huddled up like a turtle.
‘Not losing is earning.’
On that one conviction he had steadily held an annual return of 2 to 3%.
From the company’s perspective he was a valued employee who managed funds safely, but coldly speaking he was a mediocre trader with no big punch.
Perhaps that was why.
‘My incentive right now is a measly 7%.’
Taeseong chewed his lip.
Woojin Securities’ trader incentive rules.
Ordinarily even a junior-grade trader receives 5% of managed profits as an incentive.
Seniors with good results take 10%, and ace-grade traders take 15% or more.
But Taeseong, a fifth-year senior, had an incentive rate of only 7%.
The reason was simple.
“Assistant Manager Kim’s returns are too flat. You don’t take risk, so the company’s share has to be bigger.”
That was what Department Head Park said at every salary negotiation.
The bitterness of all those years of being lowballed under the excuse of ‘stability’ overlapped with the number 500 million printed in his account.
‘It’s different now.’
Taeseong clenched his fist.
This month — no, across all of Woojin Securities this year — nobody had posted a return like this.
With 1.2 billion won in managed funds, he had made 500 million in a matter of days.
This was not simply good luck.
It was the result of getting his hands on a weapon called Wopora, one nobody else could even imagine, and building up the nerve to swing it.
‘I have to renegotiate.’
At the current 7% rate, even earning 500 million left Taeseong with somewhere around 35,000,000 won.
A large sum, of course, but nowhere near enough for the risk he had taken and the results he had produced.
At this quarter’s performance review, Taeseong intended to put a new number on the table without fail.
‘I’d like at least 15%.’
Because he was no longer Kim Taeseong the ‘defensive trader’ but Kim Taeseong the ‘predator’ who devours the market.
“Wow, Assistant Manager Kim. You’re insane, absolutely insane.”
Just then, a cloying voice came from behind him.
It was Manager Jeong Hanjun.
On any other day he would not have come near Taeseong’s desk, but today he was hovering around his monitor like a bear that had found a honey pot.
His eyes glistened with greed.
“How did you think to get into Heungbu Petroleum? No, never mind that. When are you selling this? Is it too late if I follow you in now?”
Manager Jeong made to slide a hand onto Taeseong’s shoulder.
Taeseong instinctively twisted slightly and avoided the touch.
It was unpleasant.
For five years, who had treated him as an invisible man or subtly looked down on him for being fat, for having middling numbers?
With the same mouth that had cackled at every team dinner, “Assistant Manager Kim eats a lot, so why don’t you chip in extra?”, he was now begging for information.
“Who knows.”
Taeseong answered dryly without taking his eyes off the monitor.
“It’s locked at the limit — how would you get in? Are you going to wait for it to unlock?”
“No, I mean. What I’m asking is whether you think it has more room. You know something, don’t you? Where’s your source? Is there a tip going around?”
Manager Jeong’s voice dropped lower and turned confidential.
His manner suggested they should be accomplices.
“Don’t be stingy, eating alone. Are we strangers? Let’s share the good stuff, hm?”
‘We are strangers.’
Taeseong sneered coldly on the inside.
‘When I was frozen out and shoved into a corner you treated me like a total stranger. Now you smell money and suddenly it’s “we”?’
Taeseong slowly turned his head and looked at Manager Jeong.
An expressionless face. But the eyes were cold and settled.
Manager Jeong flinched and took a step back.
These were not the eyes of the docile Assistant Manager Kim.
“Sir, I went in on the news and a hunch, same as anyone. There’s a war on. It’s common sense that oil prices go up, isn’t it?”
“Huh? Ah, r-right. Common sense.”
“And investing is done at your own responsibility, isn’t it? If you buy because I told you to and it falls, you’re not going to make me answer for it, are you?”
“Hey now, that’s a cold way to put it......”
Against Taeseong’s well-reasoned wall, Manager Jeong could only smack his lips and back off.
But even walking back to his seat he kept stealing glances at Taeseong’s monitor, unwilling to let it go.
He looked like a hyena.
A wretched hyena eyeing the scraps left after a lion finishes its hunt.
‘Not a chance.’
Taeseong turned his focus back to the chart.
What mattered now was not the likes of Manager Jeong.
The timing of the sell.
Now, with euphoric retail investors throwing themselves in like moths, was precisely when he had to get out.
***
12:30 p.m.
Lunch hour was in full swing, but Taeseong stayed at his desk.
An empty office, everyone gone out to eat in a crowd.
Taeseong took a lunch container of chicken-breast sausage and cherry tomatoes from his desk drawer.
The meal plan Trainer Kang Pilgeun had drilled into him.
[Kang Pilgeun: Sir! Returns matter, but you know it’s all for nothing if you lose muscle, right? Keep your macro ratios and be sure to eat properly!]
The message he had received that morning came back to him.
But Taeseong did not have the strength to lift his chopsticks.
His fingertips were trembling.
‘Dizzy.’
His vision was blurred.
The letters on the monitor doubled.
The muscle pain from the 3km all-out sprint last weekend had not faded, and after three days of practically not sleeping while gathering and analyzing war-related information, his stamina was at rock bottom.
On top of that, restricting his calories to the extreme on the diet had exhausted the glucose his brain needed.
‘Just a little...... let’s rest a little.’
Taeseong leaned back into his chair.
Cold sweat ran down his forehead.
His temples throbbed.
Textbook hypoglycemia.
He thought that if he stayed like this he might crack his head on the desk and pass out.
But his body would not obey.
A helplessness so complete he could barely twitch a finger ruled his whole body.
“Assistant Manager?”
Just then.
A worried voice reached him.
It was Associate Kang Hyeona.
She had gone out to eat, and at some point had come back and was standing in front of Taeseong’s desk.
“Huh? Assistant Manager, you look awful. Are you ill?”
Hyeona’s eyes went round.
Taeseong’s face was drained of color, and his forehead and the back of his neck were damp with cold sweat.
Anyone could see he was not in a normal state.
“I-I’m fine......”
Taeseong tried to force himself upright, but he swayed and dropped back into the chair.
“It’s just...... I haven’t slept well lately, gathering material......”
“I don’t think lack of sleep is the problem. Look at your hands shaking. You haven’t eaten either, have you?”
Hyeona’s eyes went to the lunch container, its lid not even opened.
She thought for a moment, then hurried over to her own desk.
She rummaged through a drawer and came back holding a small stick packet.
“Have this. Quickly.”
What she held out was a single-use stick filled with yellow liquid.
“It’s native honey. I eat it when my blood sugar drops while I’m dieting — it works instantly on hypoglycemia. It absorbs faster than sugar water and causes less of a spike, too. Here, say ah.”
Before Taeseong could even reach for it, Hyeona tore along the perforation and brought the stick to his lips.
Taeseong opened his mouth without thinking.
Thick, sweet honey flowed into his mouth.
An intense sweetness wrapped around the tip of his tongue.
The warmth traveling down his throat spread through his parched body.
“Feeling any better?”
Hyeona asked as she pulled out a tissue to wipe his sweat.
Taeseong nodded slowly.
His blurred vision was sharpening bit by bit, and he could feel his wildly racing heart settling.
“...... Yes. Thanks to you I think I’ll live.”
“What a relief. Working hard is all well and good, but health comes first, doesn’t it. If you collapse, who’s going to make the money?”
Hyeona smiled playfully, but her eyes held genuine concern.
Taeseong felt something soften in his chest.
An emotion sweeter than the honey lingering in his mouth bloomed.
In five years in this cold battlefield of an office, had anyone ever looked after his health this carefully?
“Thank you, Hyeona. Really.”
“If you’re grateful, buy me something good later. Something expensive.”
“Of course. Once I realize the profits and the incentive comes through, beef is on me.”
“Oh! I’m holding you to that. Beef!”
Hyeona went back to her seat with a bright smile.
Taeseong stared blankly at the empty honey wrapper in his hand.
It was a small, worthless scrap of plastic, but the comfort it had given him was anything but light.
‘Right. You have to live to spend money and buy anyone beef.’
Taeseong opened the lid of his lunch container.
The chicken breast he had not even wanted to look at a moment ago now seemed edible.
He had to live.
And he had to win.
For the people who had ignored him — and for the person who looked after him.
***
1 p.m.
The afternoon session opened.
Taeseong adjusted his glasses and returned to the front.
His eyes were sharper than before.
The energy recharged by one mouthful of honey went entirely to his brain.
‘Right, time to wrap this up.’
The information Wopora had given him.
[10/11 (Wed). International oil prices spike 4% and the market convulses. But the real wave has not yet broken over the market.]
The real wave had not yet come.
People thought the current spike in oil prices and the surge in defense stocks were the end of this war theme.
But Taeseong knew.
That this was nothing but the preview.
‘Defense and oil are bait.’
Taeseong took the mouse.
He opened the sell order window.
Names: Victek, and Heungbu Petroleum.
Current returns: +45% and +60%.
They might climb further. A market gripped by madness has lost its reason, after all.
But get greedy trying to sell at the very peak and you get hurt.
Sell at the shoulder. That was a trader’s virtue and his law of survival.
Tap. Tap.
Taeseong entered split sell orders without hesitation.
Dumping it all at once could shock the market, so he broke the volume up and threw it out at ten-minute intervals.
The ones eating up his shares were ants like Manager Jeong, who had rushed in late like moths to a flame.
[Filled.]
[Filled.]
Cash piled up neatly.
The moment valuation profit converted into realized profit.
His account balance was passing 1.7 billion won.
He had started with 1.2 billion and earned 500 million.
‘Right, time to get ready to receive the real protagonist.’
Taeseong typed a new keyword into the search bar.
‘Shipping’.
The Red Sea closes.
The Suez Canal stops.
Then ships have to go around the Cape of Good Hope in Africa.
Voyage distance increases, and time increases.
That means a shortage of vessel supply, and that means an explosion in freight indices.
‘HMM.’
‘Noah Shipping.’
‘Daehan Shipping.’
Taeseong pulled up the shipping charts on his monitor.
The market was still quiet.
Everyone’s eyes were fixed on burning oil and defense, and nobody was paying attention to the ships sitting cold on the water.
The charts were crawling along the bottom, and volume had dried up.
Perfect.
‘You buy when nobody is watching.’
Taeseong loaded up the 1.7 billion won in cash he had secured from selling.
Like a predator eyeing its prey, he held his breath and gauged the timing of the buy.
There was no need to go in right this moment.
Tomorrow.
The instant the news of the war-risk premium insurance Wopora had foretold came through.
The moment that small ripple began was precisely the entry point.
Taeseong looked at HMM’s chart on his monitor as if stroking it.
To his eyes, the chart lined with blue candles looked like a volcano about to erupt.
“Wait for it.”
Taeseong murmured softly.
“Tomorrow you’ll all be the protagonists.”
From the seat beside him came Manager Jeong’s shriek: “Agh! Heungbu Petroleum broke off the limit! Who is it? Who dumped that volume!”
Taeseong feigned ignorance and put the rest of the chicken breast in his mouth.
It was nutty.
The chicken breast tasted awfully good today.