Realizing that made me sigh without thinking.
‘It’s about to get busy now.’
People always assume that things unfold in a straight line. They think when a bubble bursts, the market crashes hard for a few days and it’s over. That stocks will soar suddenly by dozens of percentage points during a bull run.
But reality doesn’t work like that. Japan’s bubble economy collapse is still ongoing, and the Madoff Fund lawsuits haven’t ended either.
Even after I visited Microsoft Korea and organized the Windows 95 launch event, I still had mountains of work left. I rubbed my forehead.
“I still have to deal with the First Chechen War... develop shale gas... take advantage of the yen depreciation while cleaning up earthquake aftermath...”
I suppose it would’ve been mentally easier to just exploit the aftermath of the earthquake without thinking. But I’m way too busy to focus on such minor issues.
Take George Soros for example—he just happened to be hedged against the yen weakening, and he made a massive profit during the Kobe earthquake.
Now the Japanese call him some kind of demon, Soros the Yokai.
I didn’t want to be called that, so I didn’t touch it. Making huge money directly off a disaster isn’t a good long-term move. It’s not like I plan to stop operating in Japan forever, and fixing my reputation later would be too hard.
“...Young lady. Did you say ‘First’ Chechen War?”
Lee Si-hyun, who had stopped by for Lunar New Year for the first time in a while, frowned like she’d heard something she wasn’t supposed to.
“Then what, you think Russia will just sit back and let Chechnya go after seeing the state they’re in now? They’re definitely going to start a second war.”
The First Chechen War was a disaster. It basically exposed Russia as a paper tiger. They didn’t even win, and later went on to launch a second war. That says it all.
“Whew, I guess you’re right. But still, what is the government even thinking...”
“Mmh. And you? You doing okay? I gave you a heads-up, but I figured they would’ve dragged a lot of people into Chechnya.”
It was winter, but Lee Si-hyun didn’t seem cold in her tank top. She stretched her arms, her sharply defined abs drawing attention.
Yes, that’s what it sounds like. I was aroused.
“Well, most of the people under me are women, so I was fine. Also, I bribed the government ahead of time... Ah, please back off. Stop shoving your face into my stomach...”
“What? I like it. It’s nostalgic. Hee.”
I smiled sweetly, and Si-hyun responded by squeezing my chest and poking at my upper chest with her fingers.
“Look at this. You’re a full-grown lady now, you shouldn’t be doing this. You’ve gotten pretty tall too, haven’t you? You’re almost my height now, and I think you’ll be taller than me later. It’s unsightly.”
Everyone else likes it though.
“Anyway, how’s your health? You seem fine today, but I was late with the hospital visit.”
She scratched her head, looking apologetic. Traveling from Russia to Korea was no easy feat, especially since she had to be extremely careful after laundering her identity.
“Mmhm, I’m fine. I even took off all the bandages.”
I pointed to one side of the room.
There was a neatly preserved bandage. It was the one I had wrapped around my foot. My classmates had written doodles on it, and honestly, I wasn’t really that injured—so it was still clean.
“Ah... that. I see. You’ve made a lot more friends since I last saw you. That’s a relief.”
Out of sight, out of mind. I had worried Si-hyun’s loyalty might have dulled over time, but thankfully it hadn’t.
I mean, it could’ve. After all, wielding power in Russia might’ve made her start to believe she was some kind of massive political player.
‘Which she kind of is, really...’
This is why it’s nearly impossible to rule the world from the shadows. The idea that the head of government is a mere puppet while someone else secretly pulls the strings doesn’t hold up in reality.
Just look at old Putin. He rose to power by grabbing the rope the oligarchs threw him, but once he became head of state, he reduced those oligarchs to nothing.
Fortunately, I got rid of that ungrateful wolf early on. But to blindly trust that neither Si-hyun nor the politician she picked will ever betray me—that would ★ ★ be dangerously naive.
“In my view, the Chechen War’s already a success—in failing. Russia’s economy will be wrecked even further, and if oil prices, their last remaining source of revenue, drop too... they’ll hit rock bottom.”
“Oil prices, huh... What are you planning now?”
“I’m not planning anything. It’s just going to happen. Didn’t I tell you? I shared all the plans.”
“...Even if I do know roughly what’s going on, I can’t be sure. Didn’t you write that yourself?”
“Yeah. It’s all about probabilities, and even those aren’t certain. But the drop in oil demand is inevitable. What’s uncertain is how Russia will respond—and that’s why I called you.”
I spun my pen, deep in thought.
At this scale—macroeconomic forces spanning years—everything is interconnected.
The Kobe earthquake hits and the yen drops. U.S. interest rates rise, global demand contracts, the Asian Financial Crisis kicks in, oil demand falls, oil prices plummet, Russia declares a moratorium, Russian bonds collapse, LTCM goes bankrupt, Wall Street bails them out and learns that “too big to fail” is real, they keep investing aggressively, money stops circulating in the stock market after the Asian crisis and the dotcom bubble, and it all flows into U.S. real estate...
And the bubble starts again. The U.S. housing bubble. The subprime mortgage crisis.
All of it culminates in the Great Recession.
If I so much as touch any part of it, I don’t know where the butterfly effect will strike. I may have eliminated Putin already, but something in the middle could snowball in strange ways.
‘And calculating that is my job.’
I pulled up U.S. stock charts and drew a few lines. Rough estimates of the Nasdaq and some IT company prices from memory.
“Hmm... looks doable.”
I added a few more lines, cross-checked with other data, rummaged through my memory, and drew up a plan. When the mental strain got too intense, I kneaded Si-hyun like a stress ball.
By the time half the day had passed...
The pen dropped off the edge of the table as I finished my calculations.
I didn’t hesitate long.
The dotcom bubble was a variable I could independently control.
Have you heard of the dotcom bubble?
Also called the IT bubble, it’s one of the more famous financial events.
In Korea, it came to prominence after the 1997 currency crisis. But globally, the dotcom bubble began a little earlier.
Right in 1995. Now. This is the starting point. The bottom.
‘I vaguely remember it from when I was young.’
My memories of my past life are fuzzy, but I remember the madness. Or rather, the ashes left after the madness burned out.
In just two short years, Amazon dropped -95%, Apple -90%. Any company even remotely tied to IT saw its stock price soar madly—then crash.
The dotcom bubble, simply put, was champagne popped too early.
The moment people thought the Internet was a new blue ocean, money poured in, forming a bubble.
Riding that bubble, people imagined a new century with boundless digital freedom. But those visions didn’t start to come true until the 2010s.
If the bubble began in 1995, that’s 15 years.
Short? Maybe. But for investors, unbearably long. Some company stocks—or indices like KOSDAQ—still hadn’t returned to their bubble-era peaks by the time I died.
The most insidious thing about the dotcom bubble was... the companies that led it were actually kind of amazing.
So the wisest investment strategies at the time were two: either avoid investing entirely, like Buffett, or buy shares in fundamentally solid companies and wait it out for decades.
Neither applies to me.
Because I can control when the bubble begins and ends.
“...Is this really okay?”
Someone asked, voice laced with doubt and worry.
But I could sense that deep down, they believed I had a way. So I nodded.
“Yeah. Buy every company with .com in its name. Spread the purchases over 20 months, slowly. Got it?”
And just like that, in a small country in the East, the bubble began to rise—slowly.
This chapter is updated by freew(e)bnovel.(c)om