thenovelthief Chapter 101
Chapter 101
Translator: Dreamscribe“In the end, it has come to this.”
“In a way, wasn’t it the predetermined course?”
British Prime Minister Theresa March announced her resignation.
The reason was to take responsibility for the British financial crisis.
A drop in the exchange rate is something that can happen in any country.
Just look at Turkey. In only one year, they went through a shocking period where their exchange rate fell by a full 40 percent.
But if the subject is the United Kingdom, the matter becomes serious.
“Even a 5 percent drop is enough for people to start talking about an economic crisis, so a 20 percent plunge is considered a national disaster. Prime Minister March could not escape responsibility for that.”
In fact, March’s resignation had already been predicted to some extent on Wall Street.
She barely avoided a no-deal Brexit, but with negotiations making no progress for years, her approval rating had hit rock bottom.
But March endured.
Was it because of pride?
That may have been part of it, but in truth, even if she wanted to leave, she couldn’t.
If she had thrown everything aside and walked away saying she couldn’t do any more, she would have been criticized as an irresponsible prime minister.
She had to at least wrap something up before stepping down, to hear even a little praise for resigning properly. She couldn’t resign blindly.
“But this became the trigger?”
“Yeah. It became a perfect excuse. They must have already concluded that it would be difficult to find a breakthrough through Brexit anyway. They must have done the math. That it was impossible to achieve a peaceful Brexit through negotiations with the EU. In the end, they would have to make a decision close to a no-deal Brexit. And we all know what the result will be, don’t we?”
When there’s money to be made, Wall Street calculates faster than anyone else.
They also predict what events will occur in the future due to the current situation, and how they can make money from it.
Based on the meticulous scenarios they create every day, they decide on investments and accumulate wealth.
In that sense, Brexit was already decided the moment the national referendum passed. The UK could never leave the EU peacefully.
“No matter how desperately Prime Minister March wanted to finish Brexit properly, it was impossible. And if she really pushed Brexit through as things were, she would become the worst prime minister in history. So she passed the poisoned chalice to someone else. After all, people know this financial crisis wasn’t entirely her fault.”
Director Reynold Vale believed that Prime Minister March had seized the perfect opportunity.
She used the shocking financial crisis, now called the Second Black Wednesday, as an opportunity to throw down the premiership and pass the poisoned chalice of Brexit to someone else.
“As expected of a politician. They’re amazingly good at running away.”
“But… who would want to drink this poisoned chalice?”
“That’s exactly what makes politicians politicians. Everyone knows it’s poison, but it’s a sweet poison. The sweetness of power, especially the power of being the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. They probably think like the former Prime Minister March did. That if it were them, they could resolve this situation.”
Would they be the prime minister who failed to stop the Second Black Wednesday?
Or would they become the one who triggers the no-deal Brexit that will make the UK suffer forever?
March judged that the former was better.
Although it was the worst financial crisis in history, with the exchange rate falling below 20 percent, it wasn’t a long-term phenomenon, but rather a flash crash.
A flash crash.
A phenomenon where prices plummet sharply in a short period and then recover.
Of course, it was a little different from the usual flash crashes discussed in the financial world.
Because the British pound is a globally influential currency, its shock spread widely, making the recovery speed inevitably slow.
As a result, although the exchange rate that had fallen to 20 percent recovered to 10 percent, even 10 percent was still extremely high.
Still, the hopeful part was that they at least avoided the worst-case scenario of minus 20 percent being maintained.
“Either way, resigning would be disgraceful, but she must have thought that leaving because of a financial crisis would be more profitable.”
“Then March would actually be grateful to Kwangwoon?”
“She might not be entirely grateful since they screwed her over one way or another, but she wouldn’t simply hate them either. In a way, Kwangwoon opened an escape route for her.”
It was a funny yet strange situation.
She was in a position where she had to be grateful to the company that had triggered the largest financial crisis in the United Kingdom.
Former Prime Minister March must have been dumbfounded as well.
“So, did you figure it out?”
Now only one question remained.
Why did Kwangwoon do such a thing?
“Was Kwangwoon really the boy who cried wolf?”
The starting point of all this was Kwangwoon’s incomprehensible investment.
Because his actions were far beyond common sense, the bear funds retreated first, and then other financial firms also panicked and dumped their positions, causing this unprecedented situation.
But once things calmed down a little, the financial firms also realized something wasn’t right.
Why had Kwangwoon made such an investment?
Was it really done with no particular issue, just to bluff and deceive the financial firms?
“At first, we also thought that without any major issue, Kwangwoon had carried out that ridiculous investment simply to fool the world’s financial firms, including us. But in truth, there was another purpose. Kwangwoon had found a weakness in this massive financial market.”
“A weakness?”
“The Quant Trading System.”
The Quant Trading System is, simply put, automated trading.
You might think automation is a recent development, but its history goes back to the 1970s.
From then on, it gradually advanced, and now it is combined with AI, which is sweeping through Go world and expanding into all industries, to continuously execute algorithmic trading.
Most financial firms have already adopted quant trading and were automatically executing huge amounts of trades in seconds.
“The problem is that the automated system executes trades based on predetermined programming. When a situation occurs that even the developers did not foresee, the system cannot anticipate the aftermath and forcibly liquidates positions.”
“Then… that unforeseeable situation was, could it be…”
“Some crazy guy taking several billion euros and betting on the collapse of the United Kingdom.”
Who on earth could have predicted that some insane, filthy-rich guy would use several billion euros to bet on the UK’s destruction?
“And the system automatically liquidated positions due to the sudden surge of incoming volume. From what we learned, some financial firms tried to shut their systems down in a hurry, but it was already too late.”
Only then did Reynold visualize the situation.
The trading systems began forcibly liquidating positions as programmed, and that toppled like dominoes, causing other financial firms to dump their positions as well.
Since all the firms began dumping at once, everyone fell into panic and followed, and even the trading systems that had not malfunctioned joined in the selling, creating the chaos.
“They say the crisis of a financial firm starts from something trivial.”
Looking back at financial history, there were companies that went bankrupt for absurd reasons.
An employee miswrote an wrong buy order and wiped out all the firm’s money.
Another filed taxes incorrectly and closed under a massive tax penalty.
This incident was a financial accident caused by overconfidence in quant trading and AI technology.
“What’s the overall damage?”
“Large financial firms that had fast information like us actually made some money. We all threw holdings while averaging down. But small and mid-sized financial firms with slow information had no idea what was happening, got hit from all sides, and were completely wiped out.”
Especially the firms that relied solely on quant trading suffered the most.
“And the UK mainland took enormous damage, so we can’t predict what will happen going forward. Even the EU, which had been trying to avoid Brexit discussions, suddenly became very active because of this.”
“Because the UK’s economic crisis could infect them, so they want to cut ties early?”
“That seems to be their stance.”
The UK had become a complete wasteland.
They were a country heavily dependent on imports, making them extremely sensitive to exchange rates.
At this point, Reynold also became curious.
“But why target the UK and not another country?”
Knowing the weakness of the Quant Trading System, Kwangwoon could have attacked another country instead of the UK.
“There were probably political reasons mixed in as well. There was the no-deal Brexit crisis, and by creating an escape route for former Prime Minister March, the possibility of retaliation would be reduced. And above all, since Kwangwoon and financial firms around the world all jumped in together, it’s ambiguous to punish anyone.”
“No. Even so, something feels off.”
Why the UK, specifically?
Reynold was convinced there had to be another intention.
***
“Wow…”
“I–Is this amount even real?”
The employees who had successfully recovered all the money spread across the UK stared at the numbers before them with their mouths hanging open.
Even I let out a faint laugh at the amount that still didn’t feel fully real.
“25 trillion won. I never thought I’d see a number like this in my entire life.”
“To be honest, the UK was collapsing much more severely than expected, so we were worried we wouldn’t be able to recover our money.”
Short selling only works under the premise that the opponent doesn’t collapse completely and holds out until the end. If the target goes bankrupt entirely, then no matter how well we execute the short sale, there’s no one left to pay us.
And this wasn’t mere hundreds, thousands, or even billions.
It was trillions.
So if the UK had completely collapsed and no one remained to pay us back, our investment capital would have vanished with it.
But fortunately, the UK did not collapse entirely.
Thanks to that, we were able to rotate positions throughout the night and recover our investment capital.
“Then we can now…”
A full 25 trillion won.
From Japan to France, and now the UK.
I may have made the investment decisions, but it was thanks to our team members grinding themselves down that we were able to digest such massive volumes.
So now, it seemed right to give them a vacation.
“Yes. Here are the documents.”
“…?”
“We thought you would definitely ask for them. Due to this financial crisis, the value of all UK companies has dropped. Of course, blue chips are still expensive, but we reviewed everything thoroughly with the Research Department and created this report to see if there are any stocks worth investing in.”
I blinked several times at the automatically delivered report.
Seeing my expression, the team members stood up abruptly.
“If the materials are insufficient, we’ll bring more right away!”
“N–No, that’s not what I meant. Actually, I thought everyone had been overworked lately, so I wanted to give you all a vacation.”
“A vacation!?”
Considering it was an overseas market, they had practically been living in the office, barely sleeping and focusing solely on trading.
“That’s why let’s rest for a while. Since you’ve already brought the report, I’ll just skim through this first.”
“Yes!”
Hearing the long-awaited news of a vacation, smiles bloomed across the employees’ faces.
With this much profit, I was planning to rest a little as well.
Catch up on the games I’d been neglecting, travel abroad with my family.
There were also quite a few personal things I needed to take care of.
Even after reviewing this report, I didn’t think we’d find another investment that would require us to suffer again. Even if there was something worth investing in, it would just be a few simple clicks…
“Hmm?”
But perhaps that was my arrogance.
At first, the report showed nothing unusual.
But as I moved to the next section, suddenly one after another began firing off like crazy.
‘W-What is this?’
It wasn’t just one or two.
My instinct began moving rapidly when it came to companies in certain sectors.
Because of that, it felt like my temples were overloading like an engine and creaking.
“……”
I quickly closed the report.
If I kept going, it felt like my head would explode.
Then I looked toward the team members.
“…?”
They had been happily imagining where to go for vacation and how to spend their days off.
But the moment they saw my expression, their faces slowly stiffened.
It seemed the vacation would have to be postponed.
***
“Is there no damage on our side?”
“Yes. Nothing has surfaced so far. Kangseong and the UK are not deeply connected in any way. Also, the EU is pushing Brexit forward very quickly to block the spread of the UK-origin financial crisis, so it seems unlikely the impact will reach us.”
Kang Sung-ho let out a sigh of relief.
“Good grief. CEO Jung should at least give us a heads-up when something like this happens. It nearly scared me to death.”
“Well, since Kangseong wouldn’t be harmed, perhaps he kept quiet on purpose. In fact, if we use this opportunity well, we might even be able to secure raw materials at cheaper prices.”
“As long as we’re safe, that’s a relief. But… what’s going to happen to the UK now? From what I’ve heard, this damage sounds seriously bad.”
“I think the correct description would be: unpredictable. Even if it was a flash crash, the exchange rate drop hitting 20 percent is something you won’t easily find a precedent for. Think of it as more than twice the impact of the old Black Wednesday that George Soros caused.”
And the one who did such a massive thing was Korea, more specifically, Kwangwoon.
But in the end, it wasn’t just Kwangwoon acting alone. Most major financial firms had joined the assault on the UK, making it hard to point fingers at just one culprit.
“The UK is completely isolated now. Just like Japan is currently. If they had stayed in the EU instead of pushing through with Brexit… they might not have taken damage this severe. And the EU’s follow-up response would have been much faster. Plus, all the European countries would have stepped forward to punish Kwangwoon for daring to attack the UK.”
“But since the UK acted like a jerk first, it’s fine?”
“Yes. European countries were probably enjoying the spectacle. Of course, the spillover of the financial crisis to them is a problem, but inwardly, they must have felt refreshed. The UK spent years acting horribly toward them.”
This wasn’t even vicarious satisfaction anymore.
It was impossible to understand how a mighty country like the UK could suddenly be smashed like this.
Moreover, it was even scary that what made Britain like that was a strategy that came from one person's head.
Perhaps Jung Jin-ho had calculated everything to this point.
That if he targeted the UK, instead of universal condemnation, the world might actually cheer.
“But Chairman… Kwangwoon is acting a bit strangely right now.”
“Strangely?”
“Yes. After wrecking the UK market, we thought they would withdraw their funds and pull out… but they’re suddenly pumping money back into the UK.”
“Into which sector?”
“Pharmaceuticals. For reasons unknown, they’re continuously buying up pharmaceutical companies that collapsed together due to the financial crisis.”
“…?”
Not anywhere else, but pharmaceuticals?
And pharmaceutical companies were currently going through major troubles.
Even large pharmaceutical firms were facing concerns about their future.
“It’s worse in the UK. The financial crisis delivered a finishing blow, and every one of them is collapsing.”
“And despite that, Kwangwoon is buying them?”
“Yes. They’re pouring in a considerable amount of money.”
Until now, even though Jung Jin-ho had invested in many different industries, he had never touched the pharmaceutical sector.
But right after bringing down the UK, the very first thing he did was to acquire all of that nation’s pharmaceutical companies-
Was he trying to create a drug for immortality?
Or-
“Is some kind of epidemic about to break out?”