radicalducati Chapter 27 | Twisting Waist Call
Chapter 27 | Twisting Waist Call
Back home, Cao Yisen tossed his coat onto the sofa, casually placed his Sprite on the coffee table, and sprawled out on the sofa, scrolling through his phone. He glanced at a few documents on the table; they seemed to mention something about insufficient funds for a solo venture, but Cao Yisen didn't think much of it.
He suddenly remembered something and walked towards the small desk in his room. He pulled out a chair, plopped down, and his hand instinctively went to press the light switch—
The computer lit up with a beep.
The screen first jumped off the desktop, then automatically opened a browser, and the financial website he hadn't closed last time crawled back into view, just like an old habit. The title bar was densely packed with familiar words: US stocks, technology, interest rate hike expectations, volatility index, market sentiment...
"I told you I'm never trading again in this lifetime," he muttered to himself, as he casually clicked on the day's market data.
If you calculate the time difference, the New York market has just opened, and the K-line is still slowly extending to the right. Several familiar codes jump into view—that game company, that online cinema, several hardware stocks that he was very good at in his previous life, and a bunch of tech stocks that are touting "new economy," "platform," and "cloud services," rising, falling, green, and red, seemingly unchanged.
However, he was now sitting in an apartment in Seoul.
He moved the mouse over the "game company" icon, his mind anticipating the next move before his eyes could process it—it was almost a conditioned reflex.
He was pulled up at a high price once, followed by a long period of chaotic volume fluctuations, and then there was the grand drama that was about to happen, the one he had participated in in his previous life.
"It'll be getting lively here soon."
He rested his chin on his hand, his eyes fixed on the curve that hadn't yet reached its "climax," but his mind was replaying the image of his past life where a group of people surrounded the company's terminals, cursing the short sellers as doomed while secretly adding to their positions.
Clicking on that "cinema company" again, the trend is similar—too much popularity, too much hype, and prices far ahead of reality.
"It's the same old drama," he chuckled softly. "With retail investors so excited, short sellers don't need to act too early."
He swiped the mouse over several stocks that he had shorted or longed in his previous life. The trends were pretty much the same as he remembered. However, those key "turning points" on the timeline were still lying there peacefully, like untouched landmines.
He picked up the Sprite and took a sip. The bubbles rushed into his nasal cavity, and his eyes stung for a moment.
"Calm down," he told himself. "You can't even afford barbecue right now, so don't try to fall in love with a stock worth hundreds of billions of dollars."
A news notification popped up in the bottom right corner of the screen, a news flash from a financial website—something like "A certain tech stock hits a new high" and "Funds continue to flow into growth stocks." The headline was very enthusiastic, but the content, translated, boiled down to one sentence: It's still rising, it hasn't crashed yet.
He couldn't help but scroll down a few more pages and came across a long analysis article with terms like "structural bubble," "valuation regression," and "risk repricing over the next three years." It was clear that the author was trying hard to warn the market against being too optimistic.
This tone was so familiar that he could even automatically fill in the blanks in his mind about what the author would write next.
"Take your time writing," he sighed. "In my past life, I wrote for others to see over there; in this life, I'll just watch from here."
He yawned, habitually pulled a notebook from the drawer, turned to a new page, paused for a second, and wrote just two lines—
[Gamestart: Short-term sentiment is overheated, chips are loose, and there is room for large fluctuations later]
[A food delivery platform: its pricing is too aggressive, its fundamentals can't support its valuation, and the risk is very high in the next year]
He paused for a moment halfway through writing.
"...Wait a minute, what am I doing?"
He leaned back in his chair, stared at the ceiling, and sighed, "We agreed to slack off, so why are we doing homework again?"
A few seconds later, he reached out and took the notebook back, forcefully drawing a diagonal line across the two lines he had just written, but he didn't tear them out.
"Keep it." He reasoned with himself, "Just to record how the world goes by, it has nothing to do with money."
Cao Yisen minimized the webpage, hovered the cursor between the folders on the desktop, but ultimately didn't open anything. He simply closed the laptop and put it aside.
"That's enough for today," he muttered.
Humans are just so hopeless.
Cao Yisen lay in bed scrolling through his phone for a while, but soon became so bored that he felt like "watching short videos was a waste of his life, but turning off his phone left him wondering what to do." His gaze swiped across the screen, and a small red icon on the home screen caught his eye—the one that started with "R."
He'd been itching to register a new account recently, and he even deliberately chose an inconspicuous ID:
【SeoulQuant_21】
He looks like someone who diligently writes quantitative reports but actually slacks off every day.
He initially just lurked, watching people argue in the comments sections of a few Wall Street financial channels.
People in one forum were shouting "to the moon," while people in another forum were analyzing discounted cash flow. Some were showing off their profits, while others were posting screenshots of margin calls. It was quite a lively scene.
One day, he couldn't stand a certain "technical analysis" anymore, and on a whim, he wrote a very proper reply:
"You're not a TA, you're someone who's too lazy to even open Excel."
I didn't look at the daily trend, the volume structure, or the distribution of shares. You dared to go all in just two lines? Dude, that's impressive.
I thought I would be scolded.
Surprisingly, the original poster was quite humble and even replied, "So, what do you think we should think about this?"
Cao Yisen wrote a short analysis rather casually at the time—
How to break down time cycles, how to analyze volume, why this stock is suitable for "holding for two days and then running" instead of stubbornly holding on for a month, and I also drew out a few possible paths.
He went to take a shower after posting, and when he came out and casually scrolled through his phone, a string of replies had already appeared below:
"Damn, man, that's so professional!"
"After reading this, I cut my position in half. Thanks, bro."
"Upvote, we need more of this kind of serious analysis."
At that moment, he experienced a very subtle feeling that he hadn't felt in a long time—
It wasn't the pressure of "reporting to partners" in a Wall Street conference room, but simply:
"Oh, so there are people who actually care about you."
Later he got a little carried away.
It's not about the position, it's about the posting.
He started occasionally creating separate posts, selecting topics he was very familiar with from his past lives, and writing them in a style that was "half instructional and half satirical":
[Discussion] This is not a value stock; it's an overvalued growth stock hijacked by a story.
TL;DR:
–Profits aren't as high as you think.
– Cash flow isn't as stable as you think.
– The valuation is more expensive than you think.
– The price surge is due to an abundance of money, not because it's some kind of miracle cure.
[DD] An overlooked "boring stock," but it might be more reliable than those "sexy stocks" you like.
- Industry barriers to entry are moderate to high.
– The management team doesn't have many tricks up their sleeves.
– The stock price isn't stimulating, but it's not falling either.
-Suitable for people who don't want to have heart attacks every day.
The language isn't fancy, but the structure is extremely clear:
The first three lines are TL;DR, followed by the main text in bullet points, and finally, "not financial advice".
At first, only a dozen or twenty people liked it.
Gradually, people started reporting their results in the comments:
"Bro, I bought some of that 'boring stock' you mentioned last time, and it actually went up 8%."
"Thank you for advising me not to chase that popular trash stock. Looking back now, it really saved my life."
"What do you think of XX? I'm stuck with it, down 30% now. Is it still worth holding on?"
Later, someone even tagged him in other posts:
"@SeoulQuant_21, what's your opinion on this stock?"
"I'll decide whether to add more shares or not once this guy from Seoul comes online."
Every time he saw something like this, a feeling that was both funny and dangerous would rise in his mind—
This is exactly the look in the eyes of those fund LPs and small investors when they watched his interviews back then.
That look in your eyes that says, "I believe you 70% of what you say."
After returning from the instant noodle shop today, he browsed the internet as usual. There was a lot of discussion in a certain forum about a stock he knew all too well—
One of the main protagonists of the "retail investors vs. Wall Street" battle in his previous life, he is now lying peacefully within the normal fluctuation range.
Someone was already shouting, "It's coming again! This time we rode earlier!"
Someone calmly said, "Brother, calm down. You guys don't even understand the basic short position ratio."
His fingertips tingled slightly at the sight.
If he wanted, he could write a "future preview" right now, breaking down what will happen next for these people to see—
When will the sentiment start to go astray? Which period will be driven by major players? Which period will be driven by retail investors acting impulsively? At what point will some people start to cash out and leave the market? And how will the media exaggerate the situation?
But after thinking about it, he simply closed the posting window.
He picked a much smaller, safer target in the comments section of another post and wrote a brief opinion.
Later, the price rose slightly, and someone left a message: "Dude, I held it for a few days as you said, and made a few hundred. I've got my dinner money covered! I'm so happy."
Later, another person came up to me: "You reminded me not to go all in last time, and now that stock has really dropped. I lost money, but I didn't get liquidated. Thanks."
The account doesn't have many followers, but they are slowly increasing.
Some people have started to habitually search for his ID, as if it were a kind of "second opinion".
Cao Yisen felt complicated as he read these comments.
On the one hand, he did feel a bit good.
—Just by using his brain and sending a few words from halfway around the world, some people actually make money and avoid pitfalls. This sense of control is instinctively addictive for someone like him who is used to handling big deals.
On the other hand, he was also vaguely wary.
He knew very well what this state of "people moving whenever you speak" would become if magnified tenfold or a hundredfold.
He experienced that feeling all too thoroughly in his previous life.
He raised his hand to close Reddit, the screen returned to the desktop, and the notebook with a few lines of stock names written on it, which he had crossed out, lay quietly on the corner of the table.
"Let's leave it at that for now," he said to himself. He said that, but little did he know—
If this account continues to post like this, one day it will be swept up in a much bigger wave than it is now.
That day may very well be the starting point for him to "recreate" the GMT event in this life.
Cao Yisen was about to put down his phone when he saw a line of text pop up at the top of the screen: 【Mike Calling】.
He paused for a moment, then answered the call.
I had just put the phone to my ear when it exploded on the other end—
"Bro—! Are you there? Are you there? You must be here!"
The typical American white guy spoke at a machine-gun-like pace, almost making his ears go numb.
"Yes, yes," Cao Yisen held the phone a little further away, "Catch your breath first."
"I can't breathe!" Mike's voice came through a noisy background, with the faint sounds of someone in an office shouting orders. "I have to tell you right now! Immediately! I got those two tickets you mentioned a while ago, Blue Core and Speedata, remember?"
Cao Yisen leaned back in his chair, looking at the ceiling, and softly hummed in agreement: "I remember."
Bluecore, the hardware sector, is a solid bullish stock.
Speedy, an overvalued food delivery platform, is suitable for shorting or buying puts.
Cao Yisen leaned back in his chair, already knowing the answer in his heart, but his tone remained indifferent: "And then?"
"And then?" Mike raised his voice, "Then, in just a few weeks, it made the company hundreds of thousands of dollars! Hundreds of thousands! My PnL (presumably referring to a financial indicator) was all green for days on end!"
"Holy shit, bro," Mike wasn't going to give him a chance to play dumb. "As for BlueCore, I'm the long in the company's accounts. I made hundreds of thousands of dollars for the company in just a few weeks. The PM smiles at me like he's Santa Claus now."
He paused, then emphasized forcefully, "Hundreds of thousands, over several weeks! Bro."
Cao Yisen smiled and said, "That sounds pretty good."
He paused for a second, as if to make sure Cao Yisen had heard him clearly, and then added, "I can earn tens of thousands just from commissions."
After those words were spoken, the room fell silent for a moment.
Cao Yisen glanced down at the notebook he had crossed out on the corner of the table, and his lips twitched: "That's good."
"Good?" Mike was clearly dissatisfied with the assessment. "It's excellent, so good that I feel like I'm walking on air at the company now. The PM even called me over today to say that my judgment was brilliant."
He lowered his voice, a mix of boastfulness and disbelief in his tone: "You know what? People in the company group chat are already asking me what to do next."
This sentence was like a gentle tap on something.
Cao Yisen didn't reply immediately, but walked to the window and looked at Seoul in the night. The streetlights weren't tall, and the buildings weren't tall either, completely different from the giant screens in Manhattan that were always lit up.
"I held onto BlueCore for quite a while," Mike continued. "The price action has followed exactly as you predicted, with very little pullback. Speedata was even more dramatic; the stock price plummeted as soon as the earnings report came out. I almost yelled out in my office."
He laughed first: "Honestly, if you hadn't reminded me not to be too greedy, I probably would have added even more."
Cao Yisen hummed in agreement: "It's good that it wasn't added."
"Why do you sound so much like a risk manager now?" Mike teased. "You weren't like this before."
This statement made Cao Yisen fall silent for half a second.
"People change," he said.
There was a moment of silence on the other end of the phone. Mike seemed to realize something, but quickly brought the atmosphere back to a relaxed state: "Anyway, I'm completely convinced now. Bro, if you ever really want to come back, there's always room on Wall Street."
Cao Yisen smiled but didn't respond.
Mike couldn't resist asking again, "So... do you have any other ideas lately? You don't need to say much, just give me a general direction."
Cao Yisen thought for a moment and gave only a vague answer.
"Don't be too aggressive," he said. "Take profits when you can, lock them in, and don't get greedy. The volatility will only increase from here on out."
"Got it," Mike replied immediately. "I'll do as you say."
The call was almost over, but Mike was still excitedly recounting his "legendary exploits," talking about everything from pre-market to post-market, from the PM's praise to the envious looks from his colleagues. He just couldn't stop talking.
As Cao Yisen listened, he couldn't help but glance at the half-empty bottle of Sprite next to him. He then thought of how he had just spent 3,300 won to choose his flavor at the self-service instant noodle shop, and he found it a little funny.
My classmates are worlds apart. One earns tens of thousands in commissions in Manhattan in just a few weeks, while the other agonizes over a single pack of instant noodles in Seoul.
"Sure." He leaned back lazily in his chair, then suddenly changed his tone, "Then I must first congratulate you on your fortune."
"Absolutely." Mike laughed loudly. "Brother, you're a silver-tongued guy. If you can name a couple more, I won't have to worry about my KPIs this quarter."
"Goodbye." Cao Yisen sighed, his tone suddenly taking on a joking tone. "I'm worried about dinner right now. Seriously, I'm almost out of money for food. Could you lend me some?"
There was a few seconds of silence on the other end.
"...Wait a minute." Mike seemed not to have reacted yet. "Are you serious or not? You didn't buy those two yourself?"
"No," Cao Yisen said frankly, "I'm just a wage slave now, where would I get the extra money to mess around with you guys?"
"Are you kidding me?" Mike raised his voice. "You didn't even get BlueCore or Speedata? You dumped the idea on me and left yourself with nothing?"
"That's right." Cao Yisen spun his chair around. "We don't have the money to buy it."
Mike was clearly speechless for a few seconds before finally managing to squeeze out, "Bro, that's really hurtful. I've been watching the account balance jump up every day for the past few weeks, thinking you were counting money too, but it turns out you were counting your instant noodles?"
Cao Yisen laughed: "How could I know? Instant noodles are very expensive. I already spent three thousand three hundred today. I bought a pack at a high price."
"Holy shit..." Mike sighed. "Wait a minute, I'm making hundreds of thousands on BlueCore, and you're agonizing over a few thousand Korean won for noodles. Do you know how absurd that is?"
"I know," Cao Yisen said. "That's why I just made a very sincere request to you: lend me some money for food."
Mike burst out laughing: "Okay, sure, no problem. Since you said so, I'll transfer all my profits from the past few weeks to you, all of it. Just say the word."
Cao Yisen laughed at his remark: "Alright, calm down. I didn't ask you to donate. With that little money, you can only afford a few Michelin-starred meals in Manhattan."
"No, seriously," Mike couldn't stop, "If you really ask, I'm willing to send you money. I'm living off you now."
"You still rely on me for your livelihood..." Cao Yisen teased him slowly, "You really do get commissions, but I'm really thinking about how to cover my rent and food expenses this month."
Mike clicked his tongue: "Keep pretending. Someone like you, if you really wanted to make money, you could come back in no time."
Cao Yisen didn't answer, but just smiled and changed the subject: "Alright, alright, don't shout in the office that you're going to send money to your friends in Seoul, or the compliance department will check your accounts."
"If they really investigate, I'll just say I'm funding Asian famine victims," Mike retorted. "Bro, seriously, if you ever have any big opportunities in the future, whether it's a big short or a big long, remember to tell me first."
"Maybe," Cao Yisen said softly, looking out at the night sky. "We'll see if I have enough money for instant noodles then."
There was another burst of laughter on the other end of the phone.
As he hung up, Mike was still half-jokingly yelling, "Remember, if you get hungry, just call me, and I'll give you $50 to buy you New York instant noodles!"
"...?"
The phone was switched back to silent, and the room became quiet again.
Cao Yisen glanced down at the meager amount of Korean won in his hand, and then thought of Mike's story about "tens of thousands of US dollars in commission over a few weeks," and couldn't help but rub his temples.
"Okay," he muttered to himself, "learning to live poor for a while in this life isn't such a bad thing."
Cao Yisen tossed his phone onto the bed, suddenly feeling something he couldn't quite put his finger on—not excitement, nor regret, but a familiar, unsettling premonition.
He knew very well that this was just the beginning.
From "just saying it offhand" to "someone making money by following it", and then to "being asked to give direction", he had already walked this path once in his previous life.
And now, fate seems to be asking him the same question:
Where do you plan to go in this life?