Golden Spoon Investment Portfolio - Chapter 105

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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105. See? I told you so.

“Here’s your jangchi guksu, sir.”

A female server in an apron set down two steaming bowls of jangchi guksu—noodles generously topped with anchovies broth, beef, egg, carrot, zucchini, and seaweed—along with side dishes.

“I wanted something more filling, and you bring me jangchi guksu?”

Choi Ho-geun stirred the noodles with his chopsticks, grumbling.
Song Jong-geun, who had come to lunch with him, added another spoonful of sauce to suit his taste and replied.

“On a cold day like this, hot jangchi guksu isn’t so bad.”
“The taste is fine. But I filled up on bread this morning, so I wanted something lighter for lunch.”
“You don’t even like it, so why did you eat bread?”

Choi Ho-geun glanced away awkwardly.

“It just happened that way.”

At his vague excuse, Song Jong-geun grinned knowingly.

“Looks like you had a fight with your sister-in-law. Am I right?”
“Fight? What fight. And why sister-in-law? I told you to call her sister-in-law.”

Song Jong-geun chuckled at his defensive response.

“Whatever it is, just apologize first. Even though they say marital spats are like cutting water with a knife, there’s no good in dragging it out.”
“Tch. I didn’t do anything wrong. Why should I? A man has his pride. This time, I’m absolutely not backing down.”
“Good grief. You can’t even get a proper meal and you’re talking about pride? Keep it up and you’ll get thrown out of the house.”

Choi Ho-geun scoffed and puffed out his chest.

“You think I’m the type to be under my wife’s thumb like you?”
“Is that so? Then why did your sister-in-law chase you out last time and you slept in the on-call room?”

At this sudden revelation of his dark past, Choi Ho-geun’s face flushed as he scrambled for an excuse.

“No, I told you—I had to work late because of the heavy workload, so I just ended up sleeping at the office.”
“Fine, I’ll let it slide.”
“I’m telling the truth!”
“Enough. Just eat your meal.”

Choi Ho-geun, having needlessly bluffed and lost ground in the exchange, wore an embarrassed expression before letting out a long sigh.

“When we were dating, she was so fresh and innocent, like a girl. But after marriage, I don’t know why she became so sharp-tongued. I feel like I got completely scammed into this marriage.”
“You’re not the only one. Every married man in the world feels the same way. Trust me.”

Song Jong-geun casually replied while slurping down his noodles without a care.

“It’s natural when you’re raising children and managing a household. Your sister-in-law probably doesn’t want to be like that either.”
“You’re right. Raising kids is tough.”

Choi Ho-geun smiled bitterly, then straightened his shoulders as if gathering his resolve.

“I should pick up her favorite chocolate cake on my way home from work.”
“Good thinking.”

Choi Ho-geun, reinvigorated, put noodles in his mouth and chewed while mumbling.

“The taste is decent.”

The steaming broth paired well with the toppings, making it quite palatable.
As Choi Ho-geun chewed and swallowed his noodles, he glanced sideways at Song Jong-geun across from him and asked.

“But why does your face look like that?”
“What’s wrong with my face?”
“It looks rough and gloomy. Is something bothering you? The yen we were anxiously watching dropped significantly, and we made good profits from it.”
“Ugh…”

Song Jong-geun let out a groan and spoke while nibbling on the pickled radish side dish.

“Don’t even mention it. We did manage to make profits dramatically because of the great earthquake.”
“Then isn’t that good?”
“Ah. You Koreans never listen to the end of what someone’s saying.”
“What? Is there another problem?”

Song Jong-geun exhaled a long sigh and continued his explanation.

“I closed out my position yesterday and went long again.”
“What?”

Choi Ho-geun’s eyes widened in shock at this unexpected revelation, blinking rapidly as he stared at him.

“You bought yen in the middle of all this chaos?”
“Yeah. I did.”
“Everyone’s dumping yen because of the earthquake, and you’ve lost your mind?”

Choi Ho-geun forgot all about the noodles he’d been eating and burst out loudly.
Song Jong-geun’s eyebrows drooped dejectedly as he spoke.

“That’s exactly what I wanted to tell you.”

Choi Ho-geun, who had been staring at him with a bewildered expression, suddenly gasped as a thought struck him.

“Don’t tell me the director ordered this?”
“Of course. You think I’d make a trade this massive on my own authority?”
“This is unbelievable….”

Choi Ho-geun sat there in a daze, alternating his gaze between his colleague and the bowl of celebratory noodles, then nodded with an “ah.”

“Now I get it—the reason you suggested grabbing celebratory noodles was so we could finish lunch quickly, get back, and check the market prices. Am I right?”
“Exactly. Since we’re using even more leverage than last time, every time I see the exchange rate move, my heart just pounds. At this rate, I won’t live to a ripe old age.”

Song Jong-geun looked like he’d aged a decade in the span of moments as he voiced his complaints.
Choi Ho-geun clicked his tongue and made an effort to console his colleague.

“The director must have a plan in mind.”
“I hope so.”

Choi Ho-geun wanted to offer more comfort, but he sensed that nothing he said would register right now, so he simply fell silent and ate his noodles.

After a hurried lunch with time still to spare, the two men returned to the office and immediately felt an unusual bustle and commotion as they entered the 5th Floor Trading Center.

“Huh? Is something going on?”
“I have no idea.”

During lunch break, Choi Gang-uk, a deputy manager from Investment Team 1 who had been holding down the office, spotted the two of them and hurried over with an urgent expression.

“Manager!”
“Hmm? Deputy Manager Choi. Why is the office in such disarray?”

Choi Gang-uk’s face flushed with excitement as he relayed the situation.

“The yen is—!”
“The yen? What about it?”
“The yen is surging!”
“What?!”

Bewildered by the unexpected news, Manager Song Jong-geun immediately bolted toward his desk.
Team Leader Choi Ho-geun scrambled after him in a fluster.
When they checked the dollar-yen exchange rate on the computer, the rate that had been 104.12 yen just before lunch had skyrocketed to 97 yen in what felt like an instant.

“How is this even possible?”

Manager Song Jong-geun rubbed his eyes in disbelief and looked at the computer monitor again, but he hadn’t misread it.
The yen, which had been plummeting vertically alongside the Japanese stock market, had suddenly hit bottom and was now rebounding sharply.
Team Leader Choi Ho-geun, who had approached from behind, widened his eyes in astonishment at the yen exchange rate.

“There’s nothing wrong with this data, right?”

Choi Gang-uk explained the situation in an excited voice.

“Buying pressure has suddenly surged over the past ten minutes, causing the yen to spike dramatically.”

Manager Song Jong-geun continued staring blankly at the monitor, still unable to believe what he was seeing.

“The selling pressure was so intense that it would take an astronomical volume of buy orders to reverse it like this….”

Then a thought suddenly struck him.

“Could the Japanese government have intervened?”
“I’m not entirely sure about that either. But given the explosive surge in the yen, it’s clear that buy orders in the hundreds of millions of dollars are pouring in!”

Choi Gang-uk raised his voice in response.
To quell the near-panicked yen selling in one fell swoop and reverse the situation by pulling the exchange rate up beyond 7 yen would have been impossible without dropping an enormous amount of money.
So it was reasonable to suspect the involvement of the Japanese government—more precisely, the Bank of Japan.

“Whether the Japanese government intervened or not, we’re making massive profits here, aren’t we?”

Choi Ho-geun interjected abruptly.
Song Jong-geun, who had been wearing an expression as if possessed by a ghost, stared intently at the rising yen exchange rate without wavering and answered in a daze.

“Y-yeah, I guess so.”

Just moments ago, it felt like I was in hell, but suddenly I’d been thrust into paradise.
Yet I was terrified that the exchange rate might plummet again in an instant.
Perhaps sensing this anxiety, Choi Ho-geun draped an arm around Song Jong-geun’s neck as he stared blankly at the computer monitor and spoke playfully.

“See? What did I tell you? Follow the director’s words and fortune falls from the sky. When the bonus comes in thick, don’t wipe your mouth—treat us all to a proper drink!”
“We haven’t even locked in the profits yet, and you’re already counting your chickens.”

Song Jong-geun pushed away the bothersome Choi Ho-geun beside him, but unlike moments before, his eyes gleamed with life as he monitored the exchange rate fluctuations.

* * *

Meanwhile, the Japanese stock market was also achieving a dramatic reversal in just one day following the earthquake.
Seok-won, dressed in a white dress shirt with a burgundy designer tie pinned in place, sat perched on the edge of his desk with one hand stroking his chin as he watched the television in his private office.

[Japanese Government Announces 2 Trillion Yen Supplementary Budget for Emergency Support and Recovery from the Kobe Earthquake. Will focus all efforts on recovery and stabilization of earthquake-affected areas.]

As the long-awaited announcement of the Japanese government’s massive recovery budget support came through the NHK news ticker, he quickly checked the Bloomberg terminal installed on his desk.
Sure enough, the Nikkei index, which had continued plummeting since yesterday, stopped falling and was now reversing upward.

“That’s it. Exactly as expected.”

Feeling a thrilling rush of exhilaration as my bet hit perfectly, I clenched my fist tightly.
Just then, the phone rang loudly, and Seok-won picked up the mobile phone resting on the corner of his desk.

“Hello.”
[Boss. The Nikkei just stopped plummeting and reversed!]

At Landon Shore’s excited voice, Seok-won broke into a grin, baring his white teeth.

“I’m watching it right now too.”
[I had been anticipating based on what he said, but I never expected the atmosphere to shift so dramatically in an instant.]

Just as Landon Shore had said, the investors who had been frantically dumping their stocks moments earlier quickly reversed course, greedily scooping up the plummeting shares again.
Watching the massive flood of buy orders that hadn’t appeared before suddenly erupt like a lie, Seok-won spoke.

“There’s certainly anticipation that the economy, which had been dying, will revive with the Japanese government’s massive reconstruction budget execution, but a rebound this large is likely due to short covering by speculators.”
[Ah, I see. The forces that had bet on the Japanese stock market falling further must have been startled by this announcement and are hastily liquidating their positions.]

Seeing how quickly I grasped his meaning, Seok-won smiled with satisfaction.

“Exactly. They must have panicked seeing the enormous carry trade funds they’d scattered abroad returning all at once and flipping the exchange rate in a heartbeat. When the Japanese government announced they’d be distributing two trillion yen, they probably got cold feet.”
[I’ll admit I vaguely knew there were substantial carry trade funds out there, but I truly understood their power when they were liquidated all at once this time.]

Borrowing low-interest yen to invest abroad and profit from the spread was called carry trade investing.
Japanese insurance companies investing in other countries to boost their returns even slightly was a form of carry trade as well.

[I understand that institutional investors and hedge funds took massive short positions, seeing the yen and Japanese stock market wavering due to the great earthquake as an opportunity. Things must be chaotic right now.]

Landon Shore burst out laughing.
Unlike the short-betting investors now in crisis, the Eldorado Fund had swiftly liquidated its positions and switched to long, allowing it to watch the rebounding exchange rate and Japanese stock market with champagne in hand.

“With so many investors betting on a decline, once the index surges like this, they’ll scramble even more desperately to liquidate their positions to minimize losses.”

Then Landon Shore let out a low exclamation from the other end of the line.

[If that happens, buy orders will pour in all at once, pushing the index up even higher, which means the short investors’ losses grow, triggering even more buying pressure. I can practically hear the screams of those short investors in my ears.]

Yet Landon Shore’s voice was filled with laughter rather than sympathy.
As the short investors suffered losses, every bit of it flowed directly as profits to the Eldorado Fund on the opposite side of the bet—it was only natural.
Seok-won watched the Nikkei index climbing steeply on his Bloomberg terminal and spoke.

“It’ll easily break through the previous high and keep climbing. I’m holding the Nikkei futures and yen as they are.”
[Understood.]

After giving a few more instructions and ending the call, Seok-won suddenly found himself thinking of one trader who must be in Singapore right now, wearing a hollow expression after losing a fortune.

“The end of deception is only destruction.”

Seok-won’s eyes flickered with a cold gleam for a brief moment before returning to their usual composure.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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