thenovelthief Chapter 115
Chapter 115
Translator: DreamscribeThe business secrets of the major securities firms that shake the world economy lie in information.
Now and in the past.
The securities market is the same.
Whoever gets the information faster.
That plays a decisive role in future investment strategies.
In that sense, the securities firms already knew what countermeasures the U.S. government had prepared to save the collapsing stock market.
“They said it was 4 trillion dollars, right?”
“Yes. They plan to inject it into the stock market in four phases. To boost the stock market as quickly and effectively as possible, they’ll purchase various stocks, corporate bonds, ETFs, and so on in large quantities, anything that can restore the credit spread.”
That would probably be the best option the U.S. has right now.
Four trillion dollars.
An astronomical amount.
And they planned to inject it into the market in four phases.
Moreover, their plan was to invest the funds in large amounts all at once.
That day, the entire stock market would stir.
A day with no brakes.
That was exactly when investment firms needed to tread carefully and act accordingly.
Because when the market temporarily rebounds from that effect, they need to make their gains and get out fast.
“But, what... what is this?”
All firms were closely watching the U.S. government's moves, trying to stay in step with them.
But then, out of nowhere, someone took the lead.
“Why are the National Pension Service and Kwangwoon suddenly doing this?”
The National Pension Service had stayed quiet after making a massive profit through short selling.
They had nearly one trillion dollars just sitting in their accounts.
Usually, with that amount of capital, a normal institution would place it in safe assets.
But today, out of the blue, the funds in the National Pension Service’s accounts all moved at once.
And into the U.S. stock market, at that.
“The National Pension Service is currently scooping up everything in sight, stocks, corporate bonds, ETFs, derivatives, you name it.”
With the financial power the National Pension Service possesses, it’s certainly possible for them to go on a shopping spree.
The problem was the amount they were throwing in.
“Is it even okay to dump a trillion dollars this recklessly? If they spray money around like this at will, won’t the SEC take action?”
Dumping a large amount all at once is illegal.
Because it poses a high risk of market disruption.
Even big firms like Gold Reagan don't do something so foolish as to release massive funds in one go.
The National Pension Service should know that basic rule as well.
And yet they were dumping money like this?
“Yes. That would be the normal expectation, but the SEC isn’t taking any action at all.”
Reynold tilted his head in confusion.
Who are the SEC guys?
They’re the devils of the U.S. stock market.
If there’s even the slightest problem, they immediately halt trading.
Even a company as large as Gold Reagan doesn’t get any leniency.
If they protest, these guys will go so far as to shut down their other accounts too.
They wield terrifying power.
“And they’re just letting this slide?”
At this point, it seemed even the SEC was so flustered by the National Pension Service’s sudden move that they were at a loss for words.
“That doesn’t seem to be the case. The SEC really isn’t doing anything.”
“Director. Doesn’t this mean the information we received recently might be real?”
Reynold had previously received a ridiculous piece of information.
That the National Pension Service and Kwangwoon, under Trump’s threats, would be forced to pour a massive amount of money into the U.S. stock market.
There was even talk that the amount would be close to one trillion dollars, causing the U.S. government to reduce its originally planned four trillion dollar bailout fund to three trillion.
So he didn’t believe it.
It didn’t make sense to entrust the U.S. stock market problem to foreign institutions and corporations.
“But that turned out to be true?”
But it seemed they had thought too rationally about a man like Trump, the currently grotesque U.S. government, and the madman among madmen, Kwangwoon.
Trump and Kwangwoon both.
They were far beyond the realm of normal.
“No matter what, are they out of their minds? Korea’s National Pension Service distributing bailout funds on behalf of the U.S. government?!”
“Trump is such an unpredictable figure.”
“And what about Kwangwoon and the National Pension Service who went along with it?”
“The U.S. government made blatant threats. Maybe they felt they couldn’t withstand it?”
Who in the world wouldn’t be afraid of the U.S. government?
But what if Gold Reagan had received such an absurd proposal, how would they have responded?
They would have undoubtedly launched a massive lawsuit and created a huge uproar.
“But Kwangwoon accepted this proposal. Without even a hint of resistance. What does that tell you?”
“No matter how big Kwangwoon is, they still can’t stand up to the U.S. government?”
“No. It means we’re confident we can make money even in this hellish market.”
“......!”
Right now, what if someone offered you one trillion dollars and told you to enter the U.S. stock market? What should you do?
One hundred out of one hundred people would put it into safe assets.
No, they would probably just let the money sit quietly in the account, thinking that’s the safest move.
Think about it.
Losing just 1% of one trillion dollars is ten billion dollars.
Ten billion dollars is enough to buy an entire mid-sized company outright. It’s a huge amount of money.
But if you recklessly pour in one trillion dollars now and lose just 10%, it becomes irreversible.
“Sure, bailouts are usually done with the readiness to lose it all...”
But the counterpart is Kwangwoon.
They never take part in any game where they lose money.
And those very people have entered the U.S. stock market.
Armed with a nuclear bomb worth one trillion dollars.
In short, Trump had released a lawless madman into the U.S. stock market.
***
The U.S. government gave us a free pass, but with several restrictions.
To summarize, they had completely banned any action that could drop the stock market.
Their goal was solely to revive the market.
“Experts from the White House have currently assessed that the amount needed to revive the U.S. stock market is 3.5 trillion dollars. And just in case of unforeseen variables, they had set the bailout fund at four trillion dollars.”
The U.S. government, having once failed trying to put out the fire with hundreds of billions of dollars, now aimed to resolve it through sheer volume.
Under normal circumstances, they would have immediately injected the first tranche of support into the market.
“But they paused the support plan after pushing Kwangwoon and the National Pension Service to the front line.”
In other words, they wanted to observe how effective our one trillion dollars would be before entering themselves.
“So... we’re the test server?”
“Huh?”
Even in games, you apply patches to the test server first before deploying to the main server. That’s exactly what this was.
“The fortunate part is that there’s nothing in our investment strategy that conflicts with their regulations. In the first place, CEO-nim had designed the strategy keeping in mind that we need to hold stocks for over three months, and when it comes to corporate bonds, we only need to buy a small amount as a formality.”
It seems the U.S. had assumed that if we put our money in, we would inevitably lose.
In fact, their plan to inject four trillion dollars included the calculation that more than half of it would evaporate into thin air.
And they expected us to dump one trillion dollars first and take that loss...
Sorry, but I have no intention of losing even a single dollar.
Because this is not just Kwangwoon’s money, it contains the blood and sweat of the people of the Republic of Korea.
We may be the ones to do the exploiting, but we will not be the ones to be exploited.
No. We absolutely won’t allow that.
“And as per your previous instructions, we are actively acquiring shares in the company ‘Zoom’ that you told us to pay the most attention to.”
“How’s the situation over there?”
“It was originally a company with a market cap of 20 billion dollars, but due to the recent coronavirus crisis crashing the entire financial market, it has dropped to 15 billion. So we’re injecting 5 trillion won into it and pulling in shares from the institutions currently holding them.”
The Zoom founder holds 35% of the shares.
He’s the person with the largest stake.
“The problem is deciding what we want to do with the company. Whether we’ll buy up a large stake and take control, or just acquire the shares without involving ourselves in management and sell them later.”
Right now, we’re the ones holding the gun.
And it’s a gun given to us by none other than the U.S. government.
Under normal circumstances, injecting a massive sum like 5 trillion won all at once for an aggressive M&A would be impossible. We would need to spend at least several weeks building a position before starting the operation.
Otherwise, it would be deemed market disruption and subjected to sanctions.
But right now, we don’t need to worry about anyone watching us.
If we want the company, we can just raise the buy wall all at once.
Then, in a market already plummeting, people would be tempted by that buy wall and throw in their shares, and in an instant, we would become the owners of the company.
“.......”
I briefly looked through the report on the company.
With the rise of working from home, Zoom and other video chat programs were being actively used.
The exact statistics were unclear, but Zoom was definitely one of the more widely used programs.
I reached out my hand toward the company’s name.
Was I really supposed to take control of this company?
“!”
At that moment, a sharp, stabbing sensation like being pierced by a needle surged from my fingertips.
Startled, I quickly pulled my hand back.
A very strong rejection response.
Which means...
“Let’s just invest exactly 5 trillion won and leave the rest. We won’t take control; let’s be in a position where we can exit at any time.”
“Yes. Then instead of aggressive purchasing, should we slowly enter while watching the price to some extent?”
“Yes, please do it that way.”
Currently, the funds we’re holding amount to 25 trillion won.
The U.S. stock market, starting from the COVID crash, is down –32%.
Into this dangerous hellhole, the money of Kwangwoon and the National Pension Service was being poured.
“We’re also busy right now buying up shares, and there’s no need to even mention the National Pension Service. They’re working day and night, closely aligned with us at Kwangwoon. But... honestly, I don’t know what to say about this.”
The Department Head let out a hollow laugh, as if still in disbelief.
“As you know very well, the U.S. market and others around the world are extremely sensitive to foreign capital. There’s always a lot of resistance.”
“Yes, of course.”
“But this time, there are no sanctions at all, and we’re free to buy whatever we want. It’s really hard to get used to that.”
For a trader, foreign markets were always challenging.
Especially when holding large amounts of capital.
Because financial institutions in those countries would monitor foreign funds closely and immediately block trades if anything seemed off.
But now, there’s no institution to block us.
The U.S. government itself has unleashed us under the pretext of a bailout.
That’s why it’s hard to get used to.
This is the first time we’ve experienced such a free-market tour.
“Enjoy it while you can. You never know when they’ll change their minds.”
“Yes. There may never be another opportunity like this, so we should use it well. I just hope the market recovers quickly. Judging by the U.S. government’s stance, it seems they won’t step in until the money we’ve invested crashes completely.”
Even though we received a free pass, we still had to pay a price for it.
The U.S. had no intention of injecting bailout funds until our money became worthless.
Otherwise, they’d just be doing us a favor.
But what if the stock market recovers from the carpet bombing by the National Pension Service and us at Kwangwoon?
“Then we’ll have had our fun at the amusement park, thanks to the free pass personally issued by the White House.”
***
With COVID hitting the world hard, the global economic losses were immeasurable.
Even Europe couldn’t escape the fallout.
Despite the EU stepping in to support the collapsing European markets, all they could do was slightly slow down the pace of the crash.
“Do you know what’s most heartbreaking? Kwangwoon is buying back the shipping companies that Europe took from us, and at bargain prices. And we can’t even stop it.”
That was only natural.
What kind of place is Europe?
It’s a paradise of welfare.
But because of this incident, it ended up costing even more money.
At the EU level alone, 800 billion euros had already been poured out as an economic recovery fund, and an additional 600 billion euros was released through an emergency support package.
The serious issue was that this was just the beginning.
“Even after pouring out that much money, is there a single financial market in the EU that’s improved? They’ve all been devastated. So with what money are we supposed to stop Kwangwoon from taking back the shipping industry? If anything, we should be thankful they’re willing to buy it even for that price.”
Surprisingly, those words were true.
As Kwangwoon took back the shipping companies at a bargain, they also assumed the debts tied to them, so the EU had no grounds to interfere.
On top of that, Kwangwoon had the weapon of vaccines.
If they carelessly provoked Kwangwoon and vaccine supplies were disrupted, another astronomical round of economic support would be required.
“But... what exactly happened to the U.S. stock market?”
While the collapse of global markets was partly due to COVID, the fall of the U.S. stock market played a major role.
The global financial market is ultimately tied to the U.S. stock market.
And the expectation was that the U.S. market would remain in a prolonged bear market.
But that expectation had been completely wrong.
The U.S. stock market was now showing an extraordinary recovery trend.
“Thanks to that, our European markets are also beginning to show slight signs of improvement... but I heard the Korean National Pension Service and Kwangwoon played a decisive role in the U.S. stock market’s recovery?”
“Yes. It seems the National Pension Service substituted the 1 trillion dollars that the U.S. was supposed to inject. Some expected that amount to be wiped out, but instead, it served as a rebound trigger, resulting in this crazy recovery trend.”
The sudden injection of one trillion dollars.
The U.S. stock market was shaken hard by it.
It wasn’t a typical form of financial support. Institutions from a foreign country entered positions across the market and pushed stock prices up almost like a coordinated operation.
Normally, such actions would be sanctioned as market manipulation, but since it was approved by the U.S. government, stock prices began to soar on a large scale, which in turn eased the anxiety of suppressed investors and led to a rush back into the market.
“So... the National Pension Service and Kwangwoon actually made money?”
“Yes. The rebound began as soon as they started establishing large positions. They’re probably seeing tremendous profits right now.”
As a result, the National Pension Service and Kwangwoon had essentially scooped up stocks at the very bottom.
In other words, while everyone else was left empty-handed, the U.S. had handed those two a golden opportunity.
“Of course, the strategy used by the National Pension Service and Kwangwoon was also excellent. They chose stocks likely to trigger a frenzy and made large-scale investments that shocked the market. And it worked perfectly.”
What kind of bailout was this?
Not a government, but institutions and companies from another country saving the financial market.
This was clearly market manipulation.
“But as a result, since the stock market was saved, there’s almost no public criticism toward the National Pension Service or Kwangwoon right now.”
The heads of state and officials at the EU meeting were speechless.
Should this be praised as well-done?
Or criticized as reckless behavior?
Entrusting national-level matters to foreign states and private entities was an incredibly dangerous move!
“But in the end, it worked out, didn’t it?”
“That’s true, but...”
What mattered most was that the result had been good.
While Europe was still crumbling, the U.S. had begun to bounce back.
“Don’t we also need to inject money into the financial market at some point?”
“Yes. And we’ve already spent so much money, there's hardly anything left. And now we have to spend even more. Ugh.”
Even though the U.S. stock market had recovered, other countries also required support funds to revive their own markets.
The American market was soaring, and public dissatisfaction in other countries was rising, why were they still struggling?
The problem was that the EU had already burned through astronomical amounts of money on multiple occasions.
No one could even estimate how much more would be needed to save the stock market now.
“Well... then.”
At that moment, President of the EU Council cautiously spoke.
“Should we try asking them for help?”
At that, all heads turned toward her.
“What?”