Chapter 90: News

After wrapping up my business in Orlando, I headed back to Gainesville. My next move was to check in with the security firm I'd hired. I arranged for an additional bodyguard to ensure my family's safety, just in case the Johnsons had any stupid ideas.I even called my parents and explained everything to them. Sёarᴄh the Nôvelƒire.net website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

I told them not too worry and that I'm only doing it to be sure.

The Johnson family should never go as far as to use my family to pressure me, or they would face criminal repercussions.

When Monday came, I started acting quickly.

I juggled my classes with selling off Axon contracts.

Until Monday, Axon had reached $11.92, putting my position at $27,426,811.

I kept my laptop open during lectures, constantly selling 5,000 to 10,000 futures contracts every few minutes. The futures market had enough volume, but it probably wouldn't be possible to get out completely before Wednesday.

While I was busy unloading Axon contracts, Sam and Mark were at Johnson Trading, working hard to build up our stake in Monster Beverage.

By Tuesday's close, they had accumulated over 2.5 million additional shares.

However, despite the heavy buying, the stock price only moved from $6.92 to $7.20—just a 4% increase. This was because every time we bought, more shorting was immediately triggered.

But the results that I was hoping for were already showing.

The borrowing rate for shares has gone up from 19% to 51%. That meant that for any news shares that Doyle and Evelyn wanted to short, if they held onto them for an entire year, they would need to pay 50% of that position's worth in fees.

The squeeze was starting to take shape.

At the beginning, the short-sellers must get cooked slowly, so they won't think about covering their positions until it's too late.

After NASDAQ market closed on Tuesday, I took a glance at my brokerage account dashboard.

[Charles Schwab]

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[Total Balance: $19,430,439.64]

[Available Balance: $17,917,018.88]

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[Market Value of Holdings: $2,070,441.51]

[Margin Borrowed: $557,020.75]

[Buying Power: $35,834,037.76] (2x Leverage: Spot Trading)

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Portfolio:

[Single-Stock Futures ($AXON)] [$11.01] {[ 188,051 shares ]}

[% Gain Over Last Month: +82%]

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Recent Transactions:

[Futures Sell: AXON, Amount: 2,112,856, Average Price: $11.41, -2.93$/share Margin]

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I sold off as many Axon futures contracts as I could without tanking the price.

I managed to pull out over 24 million dollars and after paying off more than 6 million dollars of margin debt, I had almost 18 million dollars in cash.

I needed to be able to trade real shares, so I made a shift to spot trading.

I now had access to 35 million dollars in buying power thanks to 2x leverage.

The plan was to use this buying power tomorrow, assuming the news broke as expected.

I called Luna to make sure.

She told me that she had done her part and maybe even more for me.

But she didn't explain what she meant by that.

...

Morning came.

I decided to skip classes—this was just way too important.

At 8 a.m., I sat at the desk in my small office room, the one opposite the storage room.

My two-monitor setup was ready. I'd splurged on a new computer with the remaining funds I had.

With a few clicks, I brought up the Monster Beverage stock on the screen.

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[Monster Beverage Corp. ($MNST)][{$7.19}]

[G/L Over Last Day: +3.9%]

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The market hasn't opened yet and there wasn't much trading in pre-market.

Open market trading would begin at 9:30 a.m.

The other monitor was running Opera 7 and was set to the ABC News website. I was refreshing it every minute, waiting for the news to pop up in the feed.

I brewed a strong coffee and set the mug on a wooden cup holder in front of me.

8:30...

9:00...

The clock struck 9:30.

[9:45: $7.14]

[10:30: $7.03]

[11:00: $6.95]

By 11:00 a.m., the stock had plummeted back down to $6.95.

All the gains from our accumulation had evaporated.

DING!DING!DING!

My phone rang.

It was Sam.

"Yes?" I answered.

"Jack, are you sure the news will drop today?"

"Don't do anything drastic, Sam," I instructed. "If you have more cash, just keep buying more. That's it."

There was a brief pause on the line.

"Okay," Sam finally said, and then he disconnected.

[11:29: $6.89] Down.

[11:30: $7.01] Up!

I jolted up from my chair and immediately refreshed the ABC News website.

My eyes scanned the screen. There it was!

"Wealthy Successors of the Johnson Family Caught Using Dirty Tricks to Sabotage Young Brother's Investment Firm."

'The algos must have picked it up already.' I thought.

I didn't have the time to read the article. All my focus shifted back to the ticker.

[$MNST]{$7.02}

I waited.

I waited for just a bit longer.

I needed to see some buys coming in—any sign that traders were catching on.

After a minute or two, buys started pouring in—thousands of shares at a time.

Then a 30,000-share buy hit the ask, gobbling it up in one swoop.

[$MNST]{$7.06}

Without hesitation, I slammed in a bid for 600,000 shares at $7.05.

I was creating a support below the current price with the hope that it would make people consider buying in.

And that was exactly what happened. New buyers started jumping in.

But the short-sellers were quick to react. My bid began to get chewed up, and the price, despite all the volume, wasn't moving up at all.

'need to be way more aggressive.' I thought.

I threw a $5,000,000 order at the asking price.

The massive buy order smashed through the ask, instantly pushing the price up and clearing the skies.

$7.12...

$7.25...

$7.42...

I slammed in a bid for two million shares at $7.40.

An order worth almost fifteen million dollars.