Golden Spoon Investment Portfolio - Chapter 106

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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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The greater the expectations, the harder the disappointment will strike.

At the same moment, at Singapore International Monetary Exchange (SIMEX).

“Whoa!”
“The Nikkei is rising!”
“Is this a dead cat bounce?”
“The rebound is too strong for that.”
“Right.”

As traders murmured in confusion at the sudden reversal, someone’s voice revealed the reason.

“The Japanese Government announced a massive reconstruction plan!”
“It’s worth 2 trillion yen!”
“…!”

The traders’ eyes gleamed as they realized this wasn’t merely a temporary bounce, but a genuine reversal backed by solid reason.
Like a pack of starving wolves, they surged toward the trading desks and began placing orders.

“Buy 150 contracts at 600!”
“Buy 80 contracts at 610!”
“Buy 100 contracts at 600—no, 615!”
“Buy 230 contracts at 18,650!”

The Japanese stock market, which had plummeted to 18,544 the previous day, surged dramatically and breached 18,600 in moments, intensifying the chaos as frenzied traders descended into madness.
When the devastating earthquake had shattered the Japanese market beyond measure, everyone had rushed to short sell without hesitation.
But now that the index was soaring against all expectations, they were desperately scrambling to buy back the positions they’d sold yesterday to minimize their losses.
Exactly as Seok-won had predicted—a massive short squeeze was unfolding.
As the entire Trading Floor erupted into chaos as if under bombardment.
Brad Cooper, the managing director of Barings Bank’s Singapore branch, stood watching with a vacant, hollow expression.
And for good reason—he had wagered a staggering 1,000 contracts on a short position, believing this was the perfect opportunity to recover all accumulated losses in one stroke and turn the negative balance in account 88888 to zero.
It was the largest volume he’d ever traded during his time in Singapore.
He’d thrown down his final gamble hoping for a dramatic reversal, but the outcome was catastrophic.

“Brad. What do we do now?”
“Damn it! It’s already broken through 18,610 and continuing to climb!”

Employees of Barings Bank, their faces drained of all color, surrounded him and poured out words that sounded like screams.
Only then did Brad Cooper snap to attention, quickly moving to check the Bloomberg terminal installed at his pit.
Even in that brief span, the Japanese stock market continued its relentless climb, now surpassing 18,610.
As Brad calculated the losses accumulated in mere minutes, the world seemed to spin beneath his feet.
But there was no time to collapse here—Brad clenched his lower lip and bellowed toward the team members gathered around him.

“Pull the positions before losses mount further. Now!”
“How much?”
“Everything! Every last contract! Move before the others snap them all up!”

His bloodshot eyes blazing with urgency, the traders responded in unison.

“Yes!”
“Understood!”

The traders rushed to the trading desks and began buying frantically.
But the market was already in an uptrend—sell orders had vanished without a trace.
Moreover, everyone knew that Barings Bank, led by Brad Cooper, had sold massive quantities of Nikkei futures, so they clamped down on their offerings even tighter.
They were waiting for us to be cornered, hoping we’d bid even higher prices.
Like hyenas watching wounded prey stumble and bleed, waiting for it to collapse from exhaustion, Brad Cooper ground his teeth in fury.

“Bastards.”

Yet he knew that in their position, he would have done exactly the same, so he could only curse—nothing more.
This was the world of survival of the fittest, where traders could share dinner and drinks one day, only to tear each other apart the moment weakness showed.

“What do we do? There are no sell orders at all!”

As the Female Secretary spoke in distress, Brad could no longer contain himself and burst from the pit.
He strode to the front of the trading desk where traders crowded together, threw his arms wide, and shouted with veins bulging in his neck.

“19,000—no, 19,100! Buy 300 contracts!”

It was a staggering 500 points above the current price.
The traders, who had been watching and waiting, immediately unleashed their sell orders in response.
Brad snatched up the dealing cards thrust toward him indiscriminately, continuing to shout.

“500 contracts, buy at 19,100!”

As he did, the roar of traders surrounding him grew even louder.
Brad, drenched in sweat, frantically received dealing cards overflowing in both hands.
It was a desperate attempt to salvage the situation by any means necessary.
But Brad Cooper had no way of knowing that this was the worst possible choice—one that would shove him from the precarious cliff edge where he’d been teetering straight down into a bottomless abyss.

* * *

Meanwhile, Brad Cooper was not the only one thrown into panic as the Japanese stock market suddenly surged upward.

Ring! Ring!
“Buy five thousand Sony shares at market price!”
“I’m sorry? You want to cancel the sell order? The transaction has already been completed.”
“There’s nothing we can do about it now.”

With the market’s sudden reversal, the Trading Floor at Nomura Securities Headquarters in Chuo Ward, Tokyo descended into chaos once again, following yesterday’s plunge.
Amid the cacophony of ringing phones from all directions, traders frantically placed buy orders to scoop up the surging stocks.
Simultaneously, on the other side of the floor, they broke into cold sweat dealing with major investors who called in belatedly demanding to cancel their sell orders now that prices were climbing.
In the midst of this complete pandemonium, Yoshimura, the division head, stared blankly at the ticker board, which blazed with red lights as nearly every stock rallied in unison.
Normally, Yoshimura would have been the first to celebrate and welcome a market rebound.
But he could not, because he had made the judgment that the market would struggle to escape its downward trend for some time due to the catastrophic aftermath of the massive earthquake, and had liquidated all his stock holdings from yesterday’s crash, accepting the losses.
In short, he had cut his losses.
On top of that, he had sold a massive volume of Nikkei futures as well.
It was all meant to minimize losses, but instead it had become the worst possible action, multiplying his losses far beyond what they might have been.

“How… how could this possibly happen… This makes no sense.”

How could the market completely reverse itself in just a single day?
To Yoshimura, this situation felt like a vicious nightmare.
Even if the devil himself were watching from behind and manipulating the market in the opposite direction of his bets, it couldn’t have gone so perfectly awry.
At that moment, Uemura, the section chief, approached with a deathly pale face and spoke urgently.

“The losses on the futures we sold yesterday are mounting. What should we do?”

At those words, Yoshimura’s eyebrows shot up sharply.
He wanted to scream that it was Uemura who had goaded him into this mess, but since anger wouldn’t solve anything, he forcibly suppressed his irritation.
Besides, the final decision had been his own, so there was no one else to blame.
Yoshimura opened his mouth with a gloomy expression and asked.

“What’s our position looking like?”

Uemura responded immediately.

“I sold 1,200 contracts at 18,500.”
“Damn it! You sold a massive amount.”

At the harsh curse, Uemura shrank back, gauging the mood.
But Yoshimura had no time to notice such things.
As the Nikkei index surged higher, the mounting losses weighed on him, and his vision darkened.
Yoshimura pressed a hand to his throbbing head and shouted at Uemura.

“Buy it all back immediately!”
“The Nikkei futures, sir?”

Yoshimura’s brow furrowed as he snapped back irritably.

“What else would it be? We need to cover before the losses grow any larger. Buy everything we can!”
“Yes, sir!”

Uemura spun around and rushed off urgently.
Watching him go, Yoshimura clicked his tongue in disapproval, checked the large price board mounted on the wall, and cursed again.

“Damn it all.”

As he anxiously pulled out a cigarette and placed it between his lips, an employee approached and spoke hesitantly.

“Director. Usami is asking you to come up right now.”

I could guess the reason without being told.

“Nothing ever goes right.”

Yoshimura removed the cigarette from his lips and threw it roughly to the ground.

* * *

That night.
With January’s cold settling in, Seok-won sat alone at a parasol table in one corner of the Garden.
Draped in a gray cashmere cardigan, Seok-won held his phone in one hand and gazed down at Mackerel Tabby, who had grown plump and sturdy, rubbing against his legs with soft mews, a faint smile playing at his lips.

“With today’s surge in momentum, the Nikkei will climb even higher tomorrow.”

Landon Shore responded with a chuckle in his voice.

[I agree completely. By shorting, I’ve already raked in over 760 million dollars in Nikkei futures alone, and I’m already anticipating how much more we’ll earn this time.]
“The Japanese Government announcement came out, and in half a day, it rose almost 1%, didn’t it?”
[Yes. It climbed 170 points and closed with a 0.92% gain. If we’d pushed just a bit harder, we could’ve broken through 1%, which is a shame.]
“There’s always tomorrow, so don’t regret it too much.”
[Those who bet on shorts right now must be racking their brains over the enormous losses incurred in just one day. Compared to that, we’re fortunate enough to simply sit back and watch our profits accumulate—a happy problem to have.]

Even out of sight, I was certain my expression radiated the ease of someone thoroughly satisfied.

[If I’d maintained the position all this time, just thinking about what could have happened makes me dizzy.]

With such a high purchase price, I wouldn’t have suffered losses, but my profits would have been substantially diminished.

[To time it so perfectly—it’s something I feel every time, but you’re truly remarkable.]

Seok-won chuckled softly as Mackerel Tabby suddenly leaped onto my lap, and I caught the cat’s body with one arm.
It had been burrowing between my legs and playing moments ago, but apparently growing bored, it naturally nestled into my embrace and curled up to rest.

“How are things on SIMEX’s end?”
[You mean that fellow Brad Cooper?]
“Yes.”
[He’s taken a severe beating over the past two days.]
“….”
[When the Kobe earthquake sent the Nikkei plummeting, he sold over 1,000 futures contracts. But with the index surging today, he’s suffered massive losses, or so I hear.]

It was obvious—he’d overextended himself trying to wipe away accumulated losses in one fell swoop, only to get wiped out instead.

[Unlike you, he completely mistimed it.]

However, before the Japanese Government announced the massive reconstruction project this afternoon, most believed the Nikkei would decline, so it was difficult to fault Brad Cooper’s decision outright.
He simply had terribly bad luck.

‘Come to think of it, my boss’s predictions are so eerily accurate—as if he’d seen the future and come back.’

Landon Shore marveled anew at Seok-won’s extraordinary foresight.

[Since we’ve taken a significant loss this time, if the boss is indeed committing fraud as suspected, the truth will come to light soon enough.]
“That’s likely true.”

Seok-won leaned back to avoid the cat pawing at his phone as if it were a toy, then posed his question.

“The Nikkei’s previous peak was 19,331, correct?”
[That’s correct.]
“Then once it breaks through that peak, liquidate all our current positions and resume short betting.”
[Pardon?]

Landon Shore responded in surprise.

[What do you mean… Are you predicting that the Nikkei won’t climb any higher and will collapse instead?]
“Exactly. As I mentioned before, this recent surge is driven by anticipation of massive government fiscal stimulus and short covering pushing the index upward. That means once the short covering concludes, the upward momentum will inevitably weaken.”
[But surely the market’s expectations for earthquake recovery remain intact, don’t they?]
“Of course they do. However, what happens when the aftershocks subside and the actual damage figures come in—astronomical sums that far exceed initial estimates?”

Landon Shore fell silent for a moment before responding in a measured tone.

[The market’s bullish sentiment would face a harsh reality check.]
“Precisely. If the immediate damage is catastrophic enough to overshadow recovery benefits, the index will plummet far more severely than before, given how high expectations have climbed.”
[I see exactly what you mean now. That makes perfect sense.]

After discussing their next moves in greater detail, Seok-won ended the call and gently scratched beneath the chin of the cat now perched on his lap with his fingertips.
The cat immediately began purring and melted into a glutinous heap, prompting Seok-won to smile softly before gazing up at the bright moon hanging in the sky.

“Now it’s truly time to bring this to a close.”

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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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