God of Technology: Creating the Internet in Another World-Chapter 431: I Want You to Blast Them Directly

"Never thought stocks could be played like that!"

"Doesn’t that mean I got played before?"

"Good thing it got exposed now. As long as we keep an eye on these people from now on, should be fine, right?"

"This whole thing makes me too scared to buy stocks now. Afraid of getting set up."

"With all this out in the open, shouldn’t you feel more confident buying? Those elites are being watched now—they can’t pull these stunts anymore."

"Yeah, before there weren’t that many rules, so they dared to do this. Now everything’s spelled out, and the dragons said anyone caught will get hit with massive fines. Plus they’ll keep updating the rules. That’s good news for us."

"I’ve always just bought shares in the biggest companies. Sure, growth is small now, but it’s stable. I’m just thinking about collecting dividends later."

"..."

When many people saw those elites and merchants’ shady operations, they were stunned.

They never imagined stock trading could work like that.

With operations like these, didn’t ordinary folks just get harvested?

In that first moment, most people panicked.

Plenty of people thought they’d never buy stocks again—wasn’t this just handing money over to others?

But after just a little while, they realized things couldn’t be thought of that way.

Sure, the rules had gotten more numerous, restrictions had increased, but who was being restricted? Those elites.

What did that have to do with ordinary people?

Ordinary retail investors would actually be safer in this environment, right?

They just needed to honestly consider their investments, and everything would go smoothly. They wouldn’t have to worry about getting set up like before.

Soon, the online sentiment shifted, with most people expressing support for this action.

On the other side, people specifically playing the futures market also had expressions of sudden realization.

So the reason steel futures suddenly skyrocketed was that those elites couldn’t play the insider trading game anymore.

Methods like insider trading were basically just picking up money for the elites.

They just needed to keep repeating the same operations, and wealth would continuously flow from ordinary retail investors to them.

But now that it was restricted, they had to trade like ordinary people. In that case, buying regular stocks naturally carried huge risks—something these elites weren’t willing to face.

And buying shares in big companies, while relatively lower risk, had very... modest profits.

For elites who’d gotten used to raking in money like crazy, this profit rate was hard to stomach.

So where could they maintain high profits now?

Without a doubt, the futures market.

Steel futures value kept skyrocketing.

Sure, it wasn’t like when the stock exchange first appeared and those big companies would surge multiple times, even dozens of times, but the upward trend was constant—it kept rising.

So now they were all pulling their money out of the stock market and dumping it all into steel futures.

This caused steel futures value to surge again.

The next several days were like this.

Patriarch Clarkson watched the futures market prices keep climbing, his expression constantly changing.

"We need to keep buying. No, we can’t just list orders on the futures market—we need to go offline and find people who hold enough futures, buy from them directly. Sure, it’s more hassle, might do a lot of work for nothing, but once we close a deal, we can get tons of steel futures."

"The competition on the futures market is just too intense."

As soon as this idea came out, it quickly got unanimous agreement from almost everyone in the Clarkson family.

They’d gotten in way too late and lost out on several times the profit.

Now if they wanted to compare with other better-off families, they’d have to use some unconventional tactics.

Even borrow some money to make purchases.

After all, the returns after buying would definitely be greater than the interest.

Even conservatives like the Clarkson family, under this stimulation, had started going crazy.

Precisely because of this, other families and merchants who hadn’t yet joined the futures market finally couldn’t sit still either.

After seeing all this, Nidhogg couldn’t help but marvel. At this moment he finally understood part of humanity.

His admiration for Viscount Roster deepened considerably.

As expected of the Church of Technology’s strongest believer.

With just such a simple move, something that didn’t even seem related to the futures market, he’d triggered such a massive effect. It was truly admirable.

This was way more satisfying than robbing people like they used to!

And the Viscount Roster he admired, having just finished busy inspection work and getting ready to rest, received a message from News Bird Megan:

"Lots of new media outlets have popped up recently. All of them are hyping everyone to buy steel futures. From every angle they keep explaining steel’s importance to humanity and its huge future market. Pretty influential."

"These media outlets have even started affecting our World Economic News Agency’s traffic. Should we fight back somehow?"

"How about we also start a sub-account specifically for explaining futures? Explaining steel futures?"

After seeing News Bird Megan’s message, Viscount Roster was stunned for a moment too.

But he quickly reacted and said: "I actually forgot about this."

"Here’s what you do—you personally write an article and publish it on Magic Net..."

"But don’t hype up steel futures like the other media."

"Huh? So steel futures trading is risky?" News Bird Megan was clearly stunned, not expecting her top boss to say something like this.

She’d thought this surge was completely Viscount Roster’s doing.

"Of course it’s risky. There’s no investment behavior riskier than this."

Viscount Roster said with a smile: "What I want you to write is an article directly blasting those random so-called media outlets. Say that steel’s value is nowhere near current levels, and the market can’t possibly consume this much steel in the short term."

"Even if you combine our Roster territory, Southern Development Corporation, and some other industries, we couldn’t consume this much steel."

"As for other factories and infrastructure projects, tell them to show us after they’re built."

"Bottom line, you need to explain from every angle that steel will never be worth what the futures are worth."

"Then you suggest people who want to invest should buy some land, stocks, or support some already-built industries."

"Especially emphasize that Southern Development Corporation has massive potential."