Thanks to DaoistdccKzk, rahul14. Cajun_ss, yggdrasilo, astolfo_the_tasty, hxixjsgdis, lucart58, UchihaGod and RobinH7564 for ther power stones donations.
If we hit 15 power stones by tomorrow I'll drop an extra chapter.
...
Three days later, the garage was thick with tension.
The news had just broken.
EDS had released their profit warning.
"Oh my god," Alan whispered, his face pressed so close to the screen his nose was almost touching the glass.
"Jake... Jake, it's dropping. It's at thirty. It's at twenty-five... Jake, it just hit $18! It lost half its value in twenty minutes!"
Alan grabbed his own hair, pacing the garage like a trapped animal.
"Do you know what this means?! With Grandma's ten grand, plus our money... we control thousands of contracts! We're up hundreds of thousands of dollars! Sell it! Jake, click the button! Sell it before it bounces back!"
"It's not going to bounce back, Dad," said Jake while calmly eating a Fruit Roll-Up.
Ever since reincarnating, he had been trying the different candy that this country had to offer and this Fruit Roll-Up was his current favorite.
"The institutional investors are panic-selling. There's no floor yet. We hold."
"Hold?!" Alan shrieked. "I have a heart murmur, Jake! I can't hold! I'm going to pass out in this grease stain!"
Suddenly, the cordless phone on the workbench began to ring. The caller ID flashed: EVELYN CELL.
Alan stared at it like it was a live grenade. "She knows. She saw the news. She's calling to tell us to cash out her share. Answer it, Jake, tell her we're rich!"
"Im pretty sure she's rich already," said Jake as he picked up the phone and hit the speaker button. "Hello, Grandma."
"Jake, darling," Evelyn's voice was heard through the tinny speaker.
There didn't seem to be any panic or emotion at all in her voice, but if you paid attention, you could hear a delighted tone.
"Are you watching the bloodbath?"
"Yes, Grandma. We're currently sitting at an eighteen-dollar market price. Dad is hyperventilating."
"Put him on," she commanded.
Alan leaned over the phone, his voice shaking. "Mother! We did it! You turned ten grand into a fortune! I'll have Jake sell right now—"
"Don't you dare touch that button, you spineless jellyfish," Evelyn snapped, her voice suddenly turning cold and sharp.
Alan froze. "W-what?"
"Haven't you heard jake? This isn't a dip. This is a freefall. The rats are fleeing the ship, and I want to own the water they drown in, you got it?."
Evelyn then switche her tone to a pleasant, almost too sweet one. "Jake, sweetie?"
"Yes, Grandma?"
"I'm wiring another $500,000 into your father's custodial account right now," Evelyn said smoothly. "The price is dropping, which means the premiums are shifting. Find a way to buy more on the way down. I want to ride this right into the pavement."
Alan made a sound like a squeaky toy being stepped on.
"Five hundred thousand?! Mother, the IRS will dismantle us! They'll think I'm money laundering for the cartel!"
"Oh, don't be so dramatic, Alan," Evelyn snapped. "I've already had my lawyers fax over a 'Joint Venture Agreement.' It's a temporary business loan at 5% interest. Perfectly legal. Now, Jake, take that money and buy every Put option you can find. I want to be the woman who bought the shoes off the CEO's feet while he was still wearing them."
While jake did wonder why didn't Evelyn contact her own stockbroker, maybe she derived more pleasure from making them work or just didn't want the probability of messing up that much money, it didnt matter since he quickly started to work on it.
By the end of the day with jakes 1200, Alan's 2000 and evelyn intiaal 10.000, they had made 937,200 dollars.
"Oh my god, oh my god, i think im gonna -"
Alan looked at the screen, realized he was officially almost a millionaire, and immediately threw up in the garage trash can.
The garage door ripped open, flooding the dim, blue-lit space with the harsh yellow light of the kitchen.
Judith stood in the doorway, a dish towel thrown over her shoulder.
She looked at Alan, who was currently slumped against the workbench, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and staring at the trash can like it held the secrets of the universe.
"Alan, are you dying?" Judith asked, her voice flat. "Because if you are, I'd appreciate it if you did it over the sink. I just put a new bag in that can."
"I'm fine," Alan squeaked, his voice two octaves higher than normal. He made a frantic, clumsy lunge for computer to turn it off, but his knees were still shaking from the adrenaline.
He missed it entirely and knocked a screwdriver onto the floor. "Just... allergies. The dust in here. Very dusty." Said Alan while exageratedly waving his hands.
"Whata are you watching? "
Judith didn't buy a word of it.
She marched past him, and looked down at the glowing screen.
She saw the E-Trade logo. She saw the ticker symbol: EDS. Then, she saw the "Total Account Value" rendered in bright, unapologetic green font.
$1,437,200
Judith stopped breathing. She stared at the screen for three full seconds. When she finally spoke, her voice was a dangerous, trembling hiss.
"Alan Jerome Harper. Tell me this is a video game. Tell me Jake downloaded a... a hacking game, and this is Monopoly money."
"Well, actually, Judith—"
"You're gambling?!" she exploded, her volume instantly dialling up to a ten. She grabbed Alan by the collar of his shirt. "Are you serious! The washing machine sounds like a dying walrus, and you took our money and put it into the stock market?! Are you insane?! I am calling my lawyer. I am calling the police. I am calling your mother!"
"Actually, Grandma put in a half-million dollars of her own money today," Jake said from the corner of the garage.
Judith froze. She slowly turned her head to look at her nine-year-old son, who was casually peeling the plastic off another Fruit Roll-Up.
"What did you just say?" Judith whispered.
"Dad didn't do this. I did," Jake said, his voice calm.
"I wrote a calculation that tracked the institutional sell-off of Electronic Data Systems. We shorted the stock at thirty dollars, and Grandma just doubled down our position at eighteen."
Judith's mouth opened, but no sound came out.
She looked back at the screen.
"You're angry because you think this is a risk," Jake continued, taking a bite of his snack. "But it wasn't a risk, Mom. It was all a well planned execution. Do you know what this money liquid actually means?"
Judith just shook her head, her eyes wide, entirely disarmed by the sociopathic calm of her child.
"It means you don't have to glue the handle back onto the dishwasher anymore," Jake said.
"It means we can gut the kitchen and put in the imported dark granite countertops you were crying over in Architectural Digest last month. It means we bypass the waitlist for the Valley Country Club because we can buy the 'Platinum Patron' membership in cash."
Jake leaned forward, the blue light of the laptop reflecting in his eyes as if trying to hypnotize Judith.
"It means you can walk into Neiman Marcus tomorrow, point at a rack of clothes, and tell them to put it in the back of your brand-new, 2002 Lexus RX300."
"brand-new, 2002 Lexus RX300." Judith repeated
"Fully loaded." Jake said
"Fully loaded." She said again
The garage was dead silent.
Alan squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for the inevitable explosion.
He waited for Judith to scream that money didn't excuse reckless behavior, that Jake needed a child psychologist, that this was all Evelyn's fault.
Instead, Judith slowly let go of Alan's collar. She smoothed out the wrinkles she had just made in his shirt. She took a deep breath, her posture instantly shifting from 'Stressed Housewife' to 'Beverly Hills Socialite.'
She looked at Alan, then looked at Jake.
"I want the Lexus in pearl white," Judith said, her voice smooth as silk. "With the beige leather interior. Are we cashing out today, or what?"
Alan's jaw dropped so hard it practically hit the concrete. "That's it? You're not mad? Ten seconds ago you were calling a lawyer!"
"Ten seconds ago I thought you lost our mortgage, Alan," Judith snapped, patting her hair perfectly into place. "Now I find out my son is Warren Buffett. I adapt." She turned her attention back to Jake, a sudden, bright smile on her face. "So, honey... how do we get the money out? Mommy has some phone calls to make to a contractor."
"We don't," Jake said simply.
Judith's smile vanished. "Excuse me?"