February 19, 1998.
WTI crude oil futures — $0 per barrel.
Another Black Swan recorded in history.
***
Hoo.
Sighs echoed here and there.
The clock had just passed midnight. The 19th had ended, and it was now the 20th.
Only one day left until expiration. Not a full 24 hours—more like 40—but at that point, what was the difference?
Crude oil futures at $0.
Waiting until expiration like this carried too much risk.
“...Are you all right?”
My secretary approached carefully from the side, as if asking after seeing my thoroughly disheveled hair and half-undone clothes.
Otherwise, unless her eyes were broken, she wouldn’t say that after looking at my face.
“Of course I’m fine! Ahahaha! This, this—this is what makes you feel alive, right?”
When I clapped my hands and laughed, brimming with exhilaration, only then did the tense atmosphere around us relax.
It had sunk in.
That I had just hit another jackpot.
“Huuhhh...”
“Ugh, I’m gonna die. We have to go through this for another day?”
With strange groans, my team members collapsed like limp rags. They hadn’t even done much, yet they looked like they were dying.
“Come on now, the real fight starts here, right? Time to seriously think about scooping it up.”
There’s a basement beneath the floor.
Usually that’s just a joke, a figure of speech—but right now, it wasn’t figurative at all.
Literally, there were numbers sitting beneath zero.
“So... where exactly are we scooping from?”
It was no wonder even my most seasoned team members asked with vacant expressions.
I smiled warmly and kindly.
“Just like I said—start scooping slowly from minus ten dollars. You all know how to scale in, right?”
“Ah, yes...”
They’d heard it so often it was practically drilled into their ears. They’d do fine. This team was handpicked solely for this operation, so they had better do it right.
Tap, tap.
It was late at night, but the lights at Daehwa Securities showed no sign of going out. Of course—someone had to monitor the ever-shifting crude futures prices.
$1.02
$0.11
$2.54
$5.20
The prices, so warped they were absurd, swung wildly up and down. I admired my handiwork with pride.
“Huhu, as expected of me. Always thrilling.”
“As expected of our young miss. Even in Russia, none of the crazy bastards I’ve seen could match you.”
Lee Si-hyun shook her head in disbelief.
“Tsk, way to rain on my parade.”
I’m not crazy. Well, all right—compared to a normal person, I’m pretty far off—but I’m still rational.
“Even after seeing that?”
Si-hyun gestured gracefully at the monitor with her smooth hand. On screen bloomed scene after scene of people utterly wrecked, drowning in despair and hopelessness.
“Uh... this is just a hobby.”
Unable to meet her gaze, I turned my eyes away.
“Well, now that my work’s done, I’ll be heading back to Russia.”
“Let’s go to the airport together. I need to swing by the U.S., so we can at least travel partway.”
“...I don’t have much time, but fine. It’s been a while since I saw you—let’s talk a bit.”
Of course, production cut plans don’t just appear instantly. But with things at this point, there’s no way they wouldn’t have one ready.
They were just dragging their feet to posture in the power game.
.
.
.
I would’ve liked to stay here, watching people through my voyeuristic little hobby, but unfortunately, it was time to move again.
I’d already seen it hit zero, so my work here was done.
My recently graduated friends would be safely slotted into the organization by now, enjoying their rookie orientation... so I had to get back to my own tasks.
“Ah, I’m tired. Someone give me a massage.”
The thought of working past midnight made my neck stiff.
Or maybe it’s just from screaming and jumping around like a lunatic earlier.
Considering I’ve pulled countless all-nighters, that’s probably the real reason.
Press, press.
From behind, my secretary’s large hands pressed firmly into my neck and lower back. My body might be unbreakable enough to recover after just one good sleep, but that still meant I needed that sleep to recover.
In times like this, when I was running on little to no sleep... this—mm, physical therapy—helped.
“Mm, huhh.”
A few odd-sounding groans slipped out, and then my eyes sparkled again, mind fully refreshed.
The heat surging through me told me I’d be fine for another five hours at least.
Good.
Ready to work with renewed vigor, I loosened up my body and walked past the overworked, collapsed employees.
“Ah, are you going somewhere?”
That came from the team leader, one of the few still conscious.
I flashed him a bright smile.
“Wall Street.”
It’s been a while since my second home got drenched in oil. The environmental damage was going to be severe, so I’d better go collect the cleanup fee in advance.
It’ll be pricey—after all, you’re asking Miss Yoo Ha-yeon to clean sticky black sludge.
***
Wall Street — Tiger Fund headquarters.
Tiger Fund, which was holding a mountain of crude oil futures, was practically a funeral home. Perhaps because of that, Yoo Ha-yeon’s lively steps drew glares and scorn from all around.
“...So the great one finally decided to show up.”
“That crazy witch—she screws over the entire industry just to benefit herself?”
Ignoring the losers’ muttering, Miss Yoo Ha-yeon floated right in and headed straight for Tiger Fund’s owner.
Having been promoted to Alpha Fund’s MD right after high school graduation, I now had the standing to do that.
Click.
With a smile, I tilted my head slightly in greeting to a familiar face.
“Good to see you, Julian.”
“...You came to mock me, didn’t you.”
I covered my mouth and smiled faintly.
“No. I meant it—I am glad to see you. I’ve always liked tough men, after all.”
Julian Robertson banged the table irritably.
“More like you like chumps who’ve been tough enough to screw themselves over.”
Well, that too.
“You’ve finished the calculations, right? Just give me a billion dollars and I’ll wrap this up neatly for you.”
“You’re insane. You get oil for free and you want a billion dollars?”
“Mmh, but you have to factor in storage fees, don’t you think? You know just as well as I do that right now, oil is nothing but dead weight.”
The current market was a temporary supply monopoly.
And demand was extremely inelastic. Anyone with even a passing interest in economics would recognize how rare this opportunity was.
The only comparable situations would be in wartime—and frankly, the root cause of this mess was a war waged with petrodollars, so it wasn’t far off.
“Keep looking at me like that and I’ll feel hurt. I’m actually showing you goodwill here, you know?”
He shot me a dark, piercing glare.
I couldn’t blame him. If anything, I understood better than anyone.
Losing over a billion dollars in a single day—if it were me, I’d be bawling in my nanny’s arms, and once I’d cried my eyes out, I’d be burning with the desire to destroy the bastard who took my money.
“A person like you wouldn’t set all this up just to take me down. You must have raked in huge sums elsewhere too. With oil prices killing emerging markets lately, CDS rates have been soaring—you’ve obviously cashed in on that, haven’t you?”
“Mmh, you know I was on vacation. Sure, Alpha Fund made a comfortable profit off CDS, but... you ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) know how it is—if it’s not your sector inside the fund, you’re basically strangers.”
“That Charles Gray—British aristocrat—ate all that profit on his own? Don’t make me laugh. Everyone knows he’s either your lover or your de facto subordinate. And CDS—wasn’t that created by Daehwa Securities in the first place? I’ve always wondered who made that devil’s contract...”
Lover, huh. Why did that rumor spread?
Well, I could see why. For these freewheeling Americans, it was a logical assumption.
I shrugged.
“Think what you want. You’re right about CDS—that was my invention. Made it when I was young, and it’s been paying off nicely. But... that’s not what matters to you, is it?”
Some might say it’s unreasonable to take another round of windfall profit after already pocketing so much. In some European countries, they actually enforce that.
But in America, of course it’s fair game. Especially on ruthless Wall Street.
.
.
.
How much I’d already taken didn’t matter in the slightest.
What mattered was—how much you are willing to pay. That’s the real question.
The knife is in my hand.
“A billion dollars. That’s it?”
In a voice weaker than before, my old mentor asked.
“Yes, yes, that’s plenty. The rest... meaning the contract transfer and direct oil delivery—I’ll handle all of it for you. Ah, you’ll do it over-the-counter, right? Here’s a pen—sign here first...”
When hit with this kind of brutal shakedown, the normal Wall Street mindset is: at first you feel wronged and depressed, but soon you’re thinking about how to hit back at the one who took your money.
See? His hand’s already trembling.
And I had every reason to be wary. If someone of his caliber bore a grudge, even I would be afraid. The delicate Miss Yoo Ha-yeon is physically weak, after all—if caught off guard, even an average adult man could easily overpower me.
So how do you prevent that?
Simple.
You take so much from them that they can’t even think of revenge.
If he lost a billion dollars just to me, that means his actual loss is far bigger. Even buying that oil at zero would still leave him more than 1 trillion won in the red.
If he’d been in his right mind, he’d have bought at $6–8 a barrel. So the real loss would be worse.
Time to retire, old man.
Come to think of it, in the original timeline he retired right before the dotcom bubble burst, didn’t he?
I remembered that it was now February 1998 and nodded to myself. The events may have changed, but the timing of his retirement was the same. Looks like some things really are destined.
...Of course, the trivial detail that I was the cause of it all is beside the point.