Chapter 17 · 9 min

Chapter 17

In the end, the contract with Foreman Gary was put on hold.

A house that looks sound on the outside and is rotting inside from drug-lab chemicals.

Touch it clumsily and the cost breaks as cost, and it was obvious a problem would come of reddening faces with Foreman Gary, workplace boss and oya of the site.

However much I am a guy who has mastered building and repair, it was work that had to grind in material cost and labor, and my time and stamina too.

Until a sure estimate and a weighing of gain stood, I decided not to give a rash positive answer.

More than that, there was a far more important and vast thing I had to confirm and put into action right now.

"Hey, Daisy!"

After work, I met Daisy, the compatriot young woman who had opened my account at Commonwealth Bank, in central Sydney.

It was only near the bank, at that.

Anyway, on the excuse of buying her one solid meal, I had left her a fairly important request.

Precisely deep information on the iron-ore company, Fortescue Metals Group, FMG.

With Daisy's help, the stock account and the means of trade to approach the Australian securities market were all prepared.

So I meant to invest in Fortescue right away... and wow, I really could not click the buy button at all.

I had heard it called a penny stock, but the courage to slam in eighty million won, close to my whole fortune, on a dirt-cheap stock at 0.04 dollars a share did not come easily.

So I asked Daisy, who was in finance.

Whether what I knew properly was right, and how the Australian finance sector and market currently evaluated this company, I needed exact local information.

Daisy, whether thinking she was helping a compatriot youth suffering in a strange place, gladly granted my request, giving even personal time after work.

We headed for a Korean restaurant called Daega, in a tucked alley of the city, that Daisy often went to.

Opening the restaurant door and going in, a thick smell of garlic and chili powder hit.

The Korean owner standing at the counter found Daisy and offered a glad greeting with a bright smile.

"Oh my, Daisy! It's been a while? Today you brought a friend too."

"Hello, owner! This is my friend Jeong-su. He hasn't been in from Korea long."

At Daisy's good-natured introduction I exchanged a glad greeting with the owner.

But because of the vibrating food smell I could not focus on the talk at all.

At the aged-kimchi smell stabbing the nose, saliva was at the point of dripping to under the jaw.

I nearly lost reason, and the moment I sat I shouted.

"Owner! Kimchi stew here! Boil it spicy and thick! And press the rice bowl full, heaped tight!"

People around looked, but if only kimchi stew was set in front of me it did not matter.

A moment later, on our table, a crimson kimchi stew boiling fierce in an earthen pot, bubbling, no, like lava, was set.

"Wow······ crazy, really. Just the smell and I think I'll live."

I took a spoon, scooped well-ripened kimchi and thick pork large, set it on white rice, and mixed and ate.

A spicy, salty, deep savory taste of home striking the mouth.

The stew broth flowing heavy into the stomach after so long seemed to melt in one go even my soul, tired of Australia's dry sandwiches and bland meat pies.

As expected, Koreans are a fighting people who can survive only if kimchi and garlic are transfused into the veins regularly.

Watching me, nearly long-faced, nose stuck in the pot, storm-inhaling the stew, Daisy sitting opposite, carefully picking at side dishes with a fork, giggled and burst a laugh.

"Jeong-su, my god. Is it that good? Anyone looking would think you starved for days. Eat a bit slow. You'll get sick."

"It's not the level of tasty, Daisy. Since coming to Australia my weight has already dropped 4 kilograms."

I set the spoon down and made a deliberately sulky face and whined as if wronged.

Then, in the middle of the restaurant, as if to be seen, I raised both arms and squeezed a biceps pose like a bodybuilder on a stage.

"Look at this. My precious, hard muscles are slipping away helpless right now! To stop this tremendous muscle loss, I have to pack quality pork protein and sodium into my body hard!"

"Puahahaha! My god, Jeong-su! What on earth is that! Muscle loss!"

At my exaggerated groan Daisy in the end clutched her belly and burst.

A common childish muscle-loss meme that future gym regulars live with in their mouths, but to Daisy living in Australia in 2004 it seemed to land as very fresh, bone-hitting humor.

She leaked even tears and laughed until she lost her breath.

A round of laughter passed, and around the time the pot was scraped clean and showed the bottom, we finished the meal, ordered tea, and went into the point proper.

"Go outside and the shops are already all closed. Unless a bar, there's nowhere to go at this hour, so let's just talk here at ease."

At the talk begun like that, Daisy's face sank calm in an instant to a professional face, unbelievable as the person who had been clutching her belly laughing until a moment ago.

"Right, Fortescue Metals Group, FMG, that you asked me to look into."

Daisy took a few sheets arranged in a clear file from a heavy leather bag and set them on the table.

"First, the name and company name you gave were sure. The founder's name is Andrew Forrest. And the company's main is an iron-ore development business based in the Pilbara region of Western Australia."

"Up to here, right."

At her explanation I nodded.

But Daisy's face going down the documents was very serious, and even a skeptical look expressing deep concern to me was full in it.

"But Jeong-su. As a finance worker, no, as your friend, I'll advise you sincerely. In my thinking this is too dangerous a stock. It means a stock I would never recommend if it were an acquaintance of mine."

"Why? Iron ore is a mineral that will definitely make money from here."

"That's when you really dig iron ore from the ground, load it on a ship, export it, and make money. Right now this company is absolutely not the decent mining company you think."

Daisy tapped the page with the financial statements and company history with the tip of a pen and warned in a very serious voice.

"Listen well. Fortescue, last July, Andrew Forrest acquired a shell company called Allied Mining that was struggling with a fund shortage, and only changed the name plausibly. No real asset value or operating profit, a typical penny-stock stage. And a bad piece broke not long ago, so right now it's the worst state."

She drank a sip of tea, sighed, and went on explaining.

"Right now these ones, far from a mine with the ground dug, even if they dig iron ore, infrastructure like a railway or a port to carry it to the sea is completely zero. Laying infrastructure new takes astronomical money, so right now they're only fighting a fierce lawsuit against the Australian government, asking to be forced to share the existing rail networks of the dinosaur companies monopolizing the existing iron-ore market, BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto."

Daisy's eyes turned to me without a shake.

"Literally it means an empty-shell company with no substance, only a rosy plan and blueprint. Of course the Australian economic press and finance like us treat this Andrew Forrest's moves as a reckless act like Don Quixote, a fraud play to draw investors' money, or a very extreme speculative penny stock. Not a single positive report."

"So how much is the price on the market now?"

"Right now on the Australian Securities Exchange it's going precarious between about 0.04 and 0.05 dollars a share. It had been up to 0.4 dollars, and not long ago an article came out that there was no substance, and it's sinking now. This company is holding without being delisted on only one vague expectation that it might dig iron ore. If it finally loses the rail-use lawsuit with BHP, or fails to raise funds and the mine-development project itself flips? This stock could be delisted tomorrow and become a scrap of tissue."

Daisy poured a fervent speech as if catching a child walking to the edge of a cliff.

"Jeong-su. You came to Australia and are making money hard, drinking dust on that rough site. This isn't investment, it's gambling. Going to a casino and putting money on roulette might even have a higher win rate. Putting money in this stock is no different from throwing bills into a burning furnace."

Daisy's warning was extremely commonsensical, rational, and the best advice a finance expert could give.

A shell company with no substance and zero infrastructure.

A company only fighting a lawsuit like an egg against a rock, against giant monopolies, saying it will borrow someone else's railway.

Any rational investor would naturally see Fortescue as a fraud play or a mad act.

In the eyes of ordinary people who do not know the future.

But I know.

That Andrew Forrest, the founder who looks reckless, mocked by the press now as having no substance, will in the end draw China's huge capital with his own mad bulldozer drive, and lay his own independent railway and port.

And above all the most important core.

That a few years on, meshed with preparation for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, China's iron-ore super cycle, exploding like mad, arrives!

High-rises going up across China and a huge infrastructure construction boom bursting, a mad era that sucks the world's iron ore like a vacuum opens soon.

When that time comes, Fortescue goes beyond a company that simply digs the ground, and reigns as a huge dinosaur company commanding the world's iron-ore market.

'Right, let's calculate.'

The investment money in hand is eighty million won, excluding the car and emergency funds.

Knock the 2004 Australian dollar rate generously at 800 won, and it is about 100,000 Australian dollars.

Say I buy the whole of this at 0.05 dollars a share, the current average Daisy said.

Then the Fortescue stock coming into my account is exactly two million shares.

If this later jumps thousands of times······ a tremendous jackpot will blow.

'Even if I can't eat it, I have to go!'

I set my mind to pull a full buy tomorrow, and said to Daisy.

"Thanks for the explanation, Daisy. I understood what you're worried about. Asking you, trusting you, was really the right thing."

"Good you understood. I was terribly surprised thinking you might really buy that stock."

······I am going to buy it.

Still, I did not bother saying to her that I would buy the stock.

No need to plant anxiety in her, who worries for me sincerely.

When the market opens tomorrow morning, quietly place a full buy, and that is enough.

Instead I drank the remaining tea and brought up a completely different topic.

"Do you know a bit about real estate?"