World's Richest Man: I Leaped Across Time

Chapter 37: Milestone

I absently entered my hotel room and went straight to bed, though I had a bit of trouble falling asleep.

What I hoped was that this really was just a coincidence and not some crazy twist of fate caused by my travel back in time.

The idea that maybe somehow the world was trying to lead me to the same place I came back from was unsettling.

In the morning, I packed my stuff with my family, and we decided to go to the beach one last time before driving off in the late afternoon.

As we headed down the stairs and into the lobby, I ran into the one person I didn't really want to see.

There she was, sitting in the same green dress I first saw her in.

I guessed she was waiting in the lobby especially for me, because when she saw me, she immediately stood up from the couch and walked up to us.

I noticed her hair was in a ponytail, and she looked very innocent. Again, like a completely different person compared to yesterday.

"Sorry, Jack. Can I have a minute?" she asked.

My mom looked at me curiously. "Who is this girl, Jack?"

"That's Alice. I was at the party with her yesterday." I quickly introduced her.

I excused myself and moved to the side with Alice. "What is it, Alice?" I asked dismissively.

She noticed my strange tone. "Waaa. I just wanted to thank you for helping me yesterday and ask for your number...."

I sighed, trying to keep my tone even. "Your friend Lily told me yesterday that you're studying at Harvard to become a lawyer. I'm not going to give you my number. Focus on your studies, not building distant relationships that will break in a few weeks."

She paused, looking taken aback. "But I just wanted to stay in touch."

"Listen, Alice... I'm going to be studying and focusing on my business. We will definitely meet again soon, then we can talk."

"We will meet soon? What do you mean? Are you studying at Harvard?" she asked, confused.

"No. But I'll be visiting there at some point because I have business there," I explained.

Alice looked puzzled but intrigued. "You seem to have some business all over the world."

I chuckled. "Well, not yet. Anyway, it was nice meeting you, Alice."

With that, I walked away, leaving Alice standing there, looking a little perplexed.

I headed to the beach with my family one last time.

I watched as the waves crashed gently against the shore.

When we returned to the hotel, we quickly gathered our belongings and packed everything into the Mercedes.

We hit the road in the late afternoon, heading home.

The drive was smooth at first...

BOOM!

A loud sound, and then our car veered to the right.

"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" My dad shouted, his knuckles white as he gripped the steering wheel.

"Jason! Don't swear! Calm down!" My mom shouted.

Our tire had blown out.

My dad managed to pull the car over to the side of the road safely. He continued swearing under his breath while my mom tried to keep him calm.

"Alright, everyone out," my dad said, still clearly agitated.

We all got out of the car, and my dad began to assess the damage. The blown tire was flat and shredded. He started to unload the spare tire and tools from the trunk, muttering to himself.

"Let me help," I offered, stepping in to assist with changing the tire.

We worked together to jack up the car.

Mom even came in to help for a bit and then stepped away and stood nearby, offering words of encouragement, with Sydney standing quietly behind her.

After some effort, we managed to get the spare tire on and secured.

We all climbed back into the car and made it back to Wahneta with a slight delay.

...

The following four weeks were busy.

I went to Orlando and ran the half-marathon I had been training for.

I got interested in calisthenics and worked on learning to do a planche.

It was so nice to have my young body back and be able to do those things.

I also went to a party to keep in touch with Jacob, Ashley, and the rest of our group.

Jacob decided to stay in Wahneta and work at his father's car workshop. Which was exactly what he did the first time around. That didn't change.

I made an AIM account and joined my Economics class group chat, but then I closed it and never looked at it again.

But the most important thing was that during the first week back, I sold all my NetEase shares and bought as many calls as I could in their place.

As of now, it was Saturday, August 30, 2002, and I had reached an important milestone.

[AMERITRADE]

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[Total Balance: $1,014,666.00]

[Available Balance: $2.36]

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[Market Value of Holdings: $1,014,669.64]

[Margin: $6.00]

[Buying Power: $4.72]

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Portfolio:

[NetEase Inc ($NTES)] [$4.46] {[ 10 shares ]}

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Recent Transactions:

[Options Buy: NTES Call Option ($18), Cost: $0.31, Value: $1.68, Quantity: 114,275]

[Options Buy: NTES Call Option ($16), Cost: $0.26, Value: $1.72, Quantity: 169,000]

[Options Buy: NTES Call Option ($12), Cost: $0.23, Value: $2.98, Quantity: 72,230]

[Shares Sell: NTES, Amount: 39,271, Average Price: 2.76$, -0.60$/share Margin]

[Options Buy: NTES Call Option ($10), Cost $0.16, Value: $4.28, Quantity: 74,000]

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I was a theoretical millionaire.

The average price I paid for the calls had risen, but I was now in possession of 429,505 calls.

'That is a lot of calls...' I thought.

Now that I was thinking about it, the stock only had 10.9 million shares in circulation. If I exercised all my calls, I would be the owner of 429,505 shares.

If I went above 545,000 shares, or 5%, I would become a 'significant shareholder' of the company, and I would need to start filling out Schedule 13D, declaring my ownership.

I had no intention of doing that; I was too lazy for that and there was always a different team that did it at the Johnson family.

I stared at the computer screen and pondered my strategy further.

The stock should peak in early November. Until then, I wanted to exercise all my calls so that I could dump them all at the top instead of having to sell on the way down.

At the beginning, I considered buying more call options, specifically for $18 and $20. But there could be an issue finding enough buyers at the top.

That's why, as the stock breaks $18, I want to have all my calls excercised and start slowly dumping them on the innocent sheep.

'Taxes are going to be a huge pain in the ass.' I realised.

Not like they weren't in my previous life, but in this case, pretty much all the money I will have at the end of the year will be considered profit.

Fuck.

I could consider giving some of the shares to charity, but I can only use charitable deductions to offset 30% of my gains.

This wouldn't be very profitable.

Unless the charity is somehow a load of dogcrap where the money ends up back with the person who donated it.

Unfortunately, I didn't have enough influence to make that happen.

'I would need money to cover the cost of rent and paying Derek, so I might have to sell a few thousand of the $10 calls soon.' I thought.

Once I complete the strategy and end up with a few million dollars at my disposal, I will enter a territory where buying calls for small stocks is no longer feasible.

Buying and selling penny stocks in large amounts would influence them too much, making this approach impractical as well.

If I wanted to buy shares in small companies, I needed to accumulate them over a long period of time.

Another option was switching to big-cap stocks and buying calls or shares where the daily volume was in billions of dollars. However, that isn't a strategy that can lead to making insane amounts of money in a short time.

'I need to accumulate stocks with high leverage.' was my conclusion.

I will need to visit a brokerage in person and use my trading history to persuade them to offer me high leverage.

Meanwhile, at Immortal Investments, I won't be able to use high leverage because the company has no trading history.

My plan was to donate money to the bank account under Christopher Vanderbilt, pay taxes on the gift so that the government wouldn't find any problems with it and then transfer it to the company's bank account to start building positions.

2003 is going to be a busy year.

One thing that I wanted to invest in was the military.

But there was something better.

Eggs.

In 2003, I was planning to invest in eggs.