“I think we should start close to home. Less time lost traveling,” Cat said as they poured over the map. “But how can we tell if the silver is what we want?”
It was a map of abandoned mines in New Jersey, public information available at the state Department of Environmental Protection website. While they didn’t have much hope to find that magical silver this close to civilization, it was a good start. They needed to use blessed tools to remove the ore and process the silver to keep most of its mystical demon-slaying properties. Silver that was recently mined by conventional methods had a bit of it and that’s why it worked on supernatural creatures like werewolves, but silver that has been used over and over and exposed to the ambient corruption of the surface was useless.
That’s why this was a problem she couldn’t solve by throwing money at it. Silver bullion didn’t work, she would need to buy raw silver ore. However, modern strip mining techniques guaranteed the silver they extracted was already corrupted. What they needed was to find a silver mine and send someone there to mine it with a special pickaxe. Easier said than done.
What was worse, the mines were off-limits for very obvious reasons. Most of them were on private property and closed to the general public. Trying to gain access to them through standard means would become increasingly harder and more expensive as the owners of the mines would start to get curious as to why they were prospecting these old mines. God forbid if they learned what they were actually after.
Therefore, they would split their effort into three fronts. Cat started to invest in mining companies and incorporated her own niche mining company that would focus on “organic” minerals for the consumer market. She regretted locking the money she got from speculating on the TV network stock in that energy SPAC but now she couldn’t back down without losing a good chunk of the money in escrow, along with the problem of bringing it to the US and paying short-term capital gains on it. So far she’d evaded paying taxes on that money because it technically wasn’t hers, it belonged to a long chain of transnational holdings.
On the other two fronts, Shinji would travel to Mexico, the world leader in silver production, and try to find a mine there. Alice, who had some stealth skills, was tasked with visiting the mines in New Jersey, New York, and the nearby states.
She could only hope they struck gold (actually a virgin silver vein) somewhere. After evaluating what would take to make enough holy water to defeat the demon, they gave up that venue. Alice could try and bless the water but it would take a long time to make even a small amount. The vials need to be made by hand, once again avoiding any industrialized process that would corrupt the delicate and weak magic in the holy liquid.
She’d be way happier if they could make holy water just by “boiling the Hell out of it” but if wishes were stocks, everyone would be Warren Buffet.
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While her two returner friends went on their errands, Cat decided to play the role of evil capitalist mastermind. With her cat on her lap and three computers on her desk, she started to play the market like a fiddle, trying to make the most money possible. William knew very well how to work as a day trader although he disliked the highly stressful working pace required to become one. However, she didn’t have the option to stand still while her friends were out on the field trying to help her.
The FINRA had already classified her as a “Pattern Day Trader” because she moved over twenty-five million dollars in a single day during the TV network incident, which was way more than six percent of her five-day trading volume. Now she would work to keep that classification and dive into the wild world of the (now virtual) trading floor.
She had one computer following the fluctuations on the NYSE and NASDAQ, and another with six tiled windows simultaneously playing news channels and monitoring social media for investing trends. Although these information sources were crappy and secondhand, sometimes a nugget appeared before the market could react. A day trader was much like an ambush predator, lying in wait with a truckload of cash and leverage waiting for the right moment to pounce and walk away with a tasty meal. Or get burned and lose a lot of money.
For that reason, she decided to self-finance most of her transactions, lowering her risk exposure to a bad deal with lots of leverage. She also avoided shorting stocks, as this strategy had fixed maximums for profit but a limitless ceiling for losses. What she didn’t need right now was a margin call to ruin her day and mood. It was risky and already hard to turn in a profit with all sorts of entities eager to take a chunk of the earnings. Brokerage fees, the bid-ask spread, and taxes could turn a windfall into a meager profit if one couldn’t control it correctly. Finally, she was a flesh-and-bone person trying to compete with the automated machine-learning algorithms of investment banks who would pay millions just to move a block down the street to get closer to the stock exchange and save a few microseconds of lag.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
But there was still profit to be made and fur to scritch. She avoided High-Frequency Trading as these were the domain of the algorithms, resigning herself to scalp, range-trade, and follow the news.
The first required a lot of micromanagement. She would buy a stock that took a dive, then watch it closely for a good moment to sell. Not the optimal, just a good enough moment. Once the stock was sold, she’d forget about it to avoid seller regret, if it continued to rise, or the rush of euphoria if it plummeted just after she’d sold it. Once a transaction finished, it was money in the bank and any emotional attachments to old transactions would only jeopardize the future ones. She needed to be as impersonal, cold, and calculating as the machines she was racing against.
Range-bound required the mindset of a chess player. Plan your strategy several moves ahead, recognize the trends, and set the stop-loss boundaries, then let the orders fulfill like a guided missile. It took more time but usually carried less risk than the frenzied trigger-happy scalping. Following the news was the reason she had the news channels all chattering at once in her bedroom. She avoided the headphones and kept one eye on the price tickers and another on the video and social media feeds. And like any investor worth their salt after the Gamestop debacle, she also kept the Wall Street Bets subreddit page updated every minute.
Cat spent a whole week in front of her rig, from the start of the pre-opening session at 6:30 AM to an hour after it closed at 9:00 PM. She would exercise for half an hour before and after these hours, take a shower and crash in her bed. At least she had an eager Catherine helping her and trying to learn how to work the market the best she could. It was good moral and emotional support, along with a very cuddly Mr. Mouser.
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In her second week, one of the news channels caught her attention. She muted the computer and tuned her TV set on that channel.
“… Boqueron in Cuba was struck hard by an unknown military force,” the newscaster said. “Eyewitness reported large columns of smoke rising from the direction of the controversial Guantanamo prisoner camp. The cellphone videos broadcast on social media are too imprecise to determine whether that’s true or not. Rumors of a terrorist attack...”
She immediately started to change her orders. The market was already going crazy and she placed stop-loss orders to cut her positions before it became too late. Like an unarmored person struck in the middle of the chest with an antimaterial rifle round, the market bled money like crazy. The other news feeds quickly changed along with the social media trends to focus on the developing events in the southeast portion of Cuba.
Cat stopped her day trading entirely, for personal ethical reasons. The guys back at the bank had a name for this kind of investing riding a crisis: “Tragedy Money”. There was a lot of money to be made as the market fluctuated, but William refrained from joining the bandwagon for two reasons. One, the volatility was great. Too many gains, too many risks. And more importantly, it was indeed "tragedy money". Some investors were losing fortunes because they were caught in the headwind of the fluctuations. Cat didn’t want dirty profit in her books. It helped both her and her previous incarnation to sleep soundly at night, stress-free with a clean conscience.
She shut down the market tracker and picked up her phone, “Jack, come to my room, now!”
Along with the former army ranger, they watched the situation develop. Sources confirmed the smoke columns did came from the prison camp but official U.S. sources were mum. No statement but some D.C. sources reported odd movements in military installations.
“Some of my friends in the reserve notified they are switching to active duty. As of now, it is all but confirmed that Guantanamo was attacked,” Jack said after checking his Whatsapp groups. “And we’d just pulled out of Afghanistan. The middle-eastern country is nothing but lost to the terrorists in a single week, and now they seem to be gaining momentum. The attacks on New York, and now Guantanamo. Global terrorism will rise as other groups smell blood in the water.”
“Weapon, ammunition, and military manufacturer stocks are rising meteorically,” Cat remarked.
“Are you making a good profit?” Jack asked to lighten the mood.
“No. I don’t invest in tragedies. I don’t need that kind of money,” she replied with a bit of disgust. “Capitalist ethics, can you believe it?”
“I do. I saw it at the meeting last week. You seriously considered sacrificing yourself to that creature if it would save people. You earned my respect, Catherine,” Jack said seriously.
Catherine had a meltdown and squealed like an eighteen-year-old fangirl. While Cat tried to maintain a straight face.
They moved to the living room and kept a close watch on the events as they developed. A military response team was dispatched from Florida to Cuba, while the Caribbean nation protested in the UN forum. A flash protest formed in D.C. and in New York, followed by several others in major cities. The protests turned into rioting and looting in the afternoon. People seemed to be going crazy.
Cat contacted Alice and Shinji and let them know what was going on. While Shinji was in Mexico and wouldn’t be affected by the turmoil, Alice had to double down on her sneakiness because it was a terrible time to be caught sneaking around.
The next day brought breaking news. A military source in Cuba leaked that it wasn’t an attack from without at the detention camp. The inmates revolted and tried to break out, killing several guards and soldiers stationed at the Guantanamo Bay complex. Most of the rebelling inmates were killed in action, and a list of the dead became public.
Cat had a bad premonition. She asked Jack to check the list (because she didn’t have the heart to look for that particular name), and the former army ranger returned the bad news.
Catherine’s aggressor was not listed among the dead inmates.