“What a story.” Kazuma possessed an incredibly high aptitude.
Listening to Makoto Uchiha’s short story, he was completely enthralled.
It felt as though a vast hoard of bizarre and exotic knowledge had materialized out of thin air inside his mind.
A brand-new door was opening before him.
Kazuma did not doubt the power of Makoto’s strategy for a second.
The story of how the Daimyo had initially spent a fortune to acquire a tulip, going through countless hands and enduring endless setbacks just to obtain a single rare specimen—once such a tale began to circulate throughout the Land of Fire, it would spark an immediate explosion in the domestic tulip market.
“What do you mean, pricing them per stem?” “If the nobles in the neighboring Land of Wind find out, they’ll think I, a noble of the Land of Fire, have fallen on hard times…
Give me another room’s worth!” “I want to fill every room in my house!” This was a luxury item that even the Daimyo himself deeply coveted.
The old money elites, who fancied themselves the trendsetters of high culture, would absolutely refuse to miss out.
The old money aristocrats of the Land of Fire would likely line up with fortunes in hand just to buy a single tulip.
What if they couldn’t buy one?
Then they would just have to throw more money at it!
Currently, the price of tulips on the market was still bottom-tier.
If they stockpiled a batch now, they were guaranteed to make a killing once the prices soared.
Multiplying their investment four to five times, or even tenfold, would be child’s play!
“I understand, Lord Makoto!
I’ll go and stockpile a massive batch of tulips right away!” Kazuma said, his face flushed with excitement, feeling as though a glorious future was laid out before him.
“Too small.
Your vision is too small.” “Kazuma, your thinking is still…
Forget it, let me enlighten you once more!” Makoto shook his head.
Kazuma’s vision was still far too narrow.
It seemed your leader would have to open your mind yet again!
Buying low and selling high was far too simple.
As long as one controlled the information asymmetry of the market, there was absolutely no difficulty to it.
Anyone could do it—even a dog on a leash could pull it off.
Of course, that wasn’t the important part.
The most important thing was that the sheer profit margin of such a basic scheme could not satisfy Makoto.
The selling point of tulips was their beauty and rarity.
Because they took a long time to grow and required highly specific conditions, the actual number of tulips on the market was very small.
Even if Makoto used every trick in the book to drive the price up tenfold or twentyfold, the physical bottleneck of the tulip supply remained.
It was an unavoidable hurdle.
To truly shear the sheep and rake in the big bucks, they would have to keep driving the prices up.
But if the prices rose too high, the nobles of the Land of Fire weren’t complete idiots either.
They wouldn’t be so insane as to spend their actual livelihood funds on a bunch of flowers.
Furthermore, those hypocritical parasites, upon seeing how lucrative the tulip trade had become, would inevitably try to stick their hands in…
which would shrink Makoto’s profit margins even further.
Therefore…
Simply buying low and selling high was absolutely out of the question!
“Then, what do you mean, Lord Makoto?” “We indeed need to stockpile a batch of tulips right now, and then dump them when the market reaches its peak.
However, because physical tulips are scarce, the profit we can make from trading the actual flowers is ultimately limited.” “So, what we really need to target is the primary market—the tulip growers themselves!” “This is our main objective for this operation, and the secret to making the real fortune.” “But…
Lord Makoto, tulips take too long to cultivate, and their growing conditions are incredibly demanding.
To grow them on a massive scale would require an immense amount of resources…
That won’t be easy to pull off.” Makoto smiled.
He had never intended to make money by actually growing tulips anyway.
That method was far too slow.
The growth cycle took years.
By the time a new batch of tulips was harvested, the trends among the Land of Fire’s nobility would have shifted several times over.
By then, the soup would be freezing cold, and they wouldn’t even be able to catch the tail end of the feast.
Naturally, he wouldn’t use such a foolish method.
“We don’t need to grow the tulips.
We only need to sign contracts with the flower farmers, locking in the price for the next harvest in advance.
No matter what the market price of tulips is when the time comes, we will purchase them at the price stipulated in the contract.
We can even give them a deposit upfront as a guarantee.” “This way…
we will hold a massive quantity of tulip orders in our hands.
And what we will be selling is not actual tulips, but future tulips!” As Makoto explained, Kazuma instantly grasped his meaning.
He leaped to his feet in sheer delight, shouting excitedly: “Oh!
I get it!
I get it!” “Lord Makoto, you mean that when the tulip market explodes, a massive crowd in the Land of Fire will rush into the market, but actual tulips will be scarce…
At that point, we can just bring out these contracts!
People will definitely be willing to pay extra to buy the contracts we signed with the farmers…
And when that happens, we can completely transform the physical tulip market into a tulip contract market!
We don’t need to grow a single flower; we can just trade the contracts directly!” “Hahaha!” Kazuma danced with excitement, a thoroughly devious grin spreading across his face.
“Exactly.
That is precisely what I mean.” “Hahaha!
When the time comes, we can even work with the Daimyo to forge fake contracts!
After all, those fools who have been blinded by greed won’t care about verifying them anyway!” Kazuma had even learned to apply the logic creatively, immediately thinking of forging contracts.
Though it wasn’t exactly legal…
Making money wasn’t something to be ashamed of.
Yes, indeed!
Once any commodity transaction shifted from physical goods to virtual speculation, it would trigger absolute madness.
When a mere piece of paper could be flipped to double, triple, or quadruple one’s profit in an instant, anyone would lose their minds in the rush of rapid transactions.
Blinded by greed, people would lose all capacity for rational thought.
They wouldn’t bother conducting field inspections or verifying the authenticity of the contracts with the actual farmers.
They would only buy, buy, buy, and sell, sell, sell, always believing that there would be another sucker to take the contract off their hands—right up until the bubble burst, leaving the last buyer holding the bag.
Thus, if the Daimyo lent them his authority, mixing forged contracts in with the real ones would be incredibly easy to pull off.
Once the carnival ended and the bubble burst, those contracts wouldn’t be worth more than wastepaper anyway.
Besides, it wasn’t as if anyone would actually dare to bring those contracts to their ninja village to demand the flowers.
If they did…
well, they would just have to silence them permanently.
“Hahaha!
Kazuma, as expected of you!
To think of such a wicked scheme!” Looking at the devious Kazuma, Makoto wore a look of immense satisfaction.
It seemed Kazuma was an excellent comrade, fully capable of bearing heavy responsibilities!
He could already picture the future of his ninja village.
It would be teeming with talented individuals!
A flourishing, vibrant landscape where all things thrived.