BXBX NOVEL Chapter 89: Coordinated Attack II
The next thing on my agenda was Orlando.
I drove out of Gainesville, with my bodyguard's cars following a few hundred meters behind.
...
A couple of hours later, I was parking next to the tall skyscraper where Johnson Trading was situated.
I hadn't given Sam any warning, but I was pretty sure he'd be there.
I made my way to the building, taking the elevator up. Stepping out, I walked across the grey carpet up to the polished wooden reception desk.
"Maya! Is Sam on the trading floor?" I asked, spotting Maya, the brunette secretary.
I'd gotten to know her better over the past few months.
"Yes, Jack. You can just head on in," she replied with a friendly nod. "I think he's been studying for school."
I walked to the door of the trading floor, swiped my card through the scanner, slid the door open, and stepped inside.
Immediately, I spotted Sam in a small resting corner, lying on a couch with his eyes closed, listening to a lecture from a week ago.
He must have heard me coming in because he sat up and paused the recording on his phone.
As I stepped closer, he glanced in my direction.
"Yes?" he asked.
"It's me."
"Oh, Jack," he said, recognizing my voice. "I was about to call you, actually."
"Call me?"
Sam's expression grew serious. "I wanted to tell you that the stakes are even higher now. If we don't survive this, it will be the end of me."
I slowly sat next to him on the couch and looked at him. "Does this have something to do with the talk you had with your father?"
Sam sighed, running a hand through his hair. "My father gave me an opportunity, but if I don't defend myself well enough and lose the fight for the company, he won't do me any more favors. I might even get cut out of the hereditary talks."
I gave him a firm push on the back, causing him to nearly topple off the couch. "Don't you fucking worry," I said, standing up from the couch.
He looked up. "Where is the positivity coming from? Did you contact that person you mentioned, or are we going with a different plan?" he asked.
"Everything is set to come out by Wednesday at the latest." I confirmed. "But there's something that we need to do beforehand. The news might not be enough. You know how deep their pockets are and how much funding they can get if things get bad for them. Potentially, they could pump 300 million dollars into a single stock."
"I've already thought about this," he said as he stood up from the couch with a confident expression on his face.
"You did?"
"Yeah."
He made his way to a nearby trading station and sat in front of the computer.
He grabbed the mouse, and the speakers began voicing out the commands for whatever was being hovered over on the screen.
He pulled up a chart for one of the military stocks.
We had pumped around $15 million in this one.
"Sorry I didn't give you a heads-up, but I decided to start offloading this stock on Friday," he said. "It had a contract announcement and was getting shorted, but we still managed to unload 50% of our position for just over $6 million. So, we're looking at a loss of around $1.5 million."
"Okay... so you're telling me that you're freeing up some cash by offloading that one stock so that you can pile the money into the other shorted plays?"
"Yes."
I sighed.
The plan was pretty close to what I wanted, but the stock choice was horrendous.
"Did you sell out of any other stocks?"
"I did unload one more." He pulled up another chart that had been on a downtrend since Friday. "This one didn't get any news and had low volume, so we only managed to get $2 million out of it on Friday."
"Your siblings are not shorting this one, though." I said.
"I mean... with no buyers, it's tough to borrow shares to short. But they would probably jump in if it got news..."
"Sam, listen up. Do not sell out of the stocks they're shorting."
"Why not? We need the cash."
"It's just illogical, Sam. I'm betting that they have been covering their short position into your sells. If you sell those stocks, you might get more cash, but they'll end up with just as much."
Sam paused.
"But it's all good," I continued. "We'll put that cash to work... What we need now is a major pump—something so explosive they won't have time to react before they get margin calls."
"That's exactly what I was thinking!" Sam replied. "We go for one stock and hit it hard. If they take a hit on that, we might score big enough to make attacks on other plays."
"Right. But we need to choose a stock with strong fundamentals. This way, we can avoid drawing attention from other short-sellers who are looking for pump-and-dumps."
I then continued, starting to outline the plan for Sam. "Look Sam, we should only sell out out of the stocks that didn't announce any contracts. Take the hit on those and start positioning ourselves for a coordinated bull attack on Monster Beverage."
"Monster Beverage..." he thought for a while. "Got it. So, you're thinking we sell our positions on Monday and Tuesday?"
"Yes. We'll offload those and focus on accumulating Monster Beverage. We drive up the price. That will lock up the float and put the squeeze on them. They will need to start paying high borrow rates if they want to continue fighting for it to stay down."
Sam fell into deep thought. "Hmm, but if we're accumulating on Monday and Tuesday, we won't have enough firepower to pump it on Wednesday..."
I grinned, even though he couldn't see it.
"Sam, don't worry about it.... I'm going all-in on this." I told him, "I will make sure to make them burn on Wednesday. You focus on dumping the dead stocks and piling into Monster Beverage... By the way, what's its market cap right now?"
Sam pulled up the stock information on the screen, and I glanced at the details as they loaded:
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[Monster Beverage Corp. ($MNST)][{$6.92}]
[G/L Over Last Month: -22.2%]
[Market Capitalization: ~$68,000,000]
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At the time we started buying in, this stock was sitting at a similar price to where it is now.
We put a total of $30,000,000 in it.
It hit a high of $10.42 in January, making us go over 15 million dollars in profit.
But now, with WhitePath's massive shorting, all that profit is nowhere to be found.
"Sam, even if it means taking some losses elsewhere, do it. Buy into this stock." I said firmly.