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  • How a Part-Time Job Led Me to a Global Investment Route — POP MART, LaBubu, and My Go-To Investment Sites

    While working a simple part-time job — standing in line — I made an unexpected discovery.

    One of today’s most popular collectible dolls, LaBubu, is actually produced by a company called POP MART. And guess what? POP MART is a listed company on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

    To be honest, I used to only invest in Korean stocks.
    But seeing how a daily trend could lead to a listed overseas stock made me realize something:
    💡 “True investment instincts often come from everyday life.”

    How do I research international stocks?

    In Korea, it’s not always easy to find financial statements or information about foreign-listed companies.
    But I’ve found a few platforms that give me everything I need.
    Here’s the actual route I followed when researching POP MART:

    📌 Marketscreener.com
    A global financial data platform where you can access income statements, valuations, stock trends, and even IR reports.
    Even if you’re not fluent in English, the clean and visual UI makes it easy to navigate. Highly recommended!

    📌 FnGuide (에프앤가이드)
    A Korean site where you can analyze domestic companies’ financial ratios, industry data, and investment indicators.
    It’s also great for tracking relevant ETFs and sectors.

    📌 Investing.com
    Perfect for checking real-time data like global futures indices, exchange rates, commodities, and NASDAQ futures.
    Personally, I check NASDAQ futures before the US market opens to get a sense of direction and potential timing.

    📈 From Daily Life to Global Investing

    That one part-time gig introduced me to LaBubu,
    which led me to POP MART,
    and from there, to a whole new world of international investing.

    It reminded me that investing isn’t just about numbers on a page —
    it’s also about picking up on trends and reading the world around you.

    ⚠️ Disclaimer
    I’m not affiliated with any of the websites mentioned.
    I just genuinely like them and use them often.
    (Although if any of them want to sponsor me… please! My wallet’s light, but my insights are heavy 😅)

    ✍️ Oh, and LaBubu’s popularity is soaring in Korea, too. It’s not just a local craze — it’s a global wave.

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  • “A World That Prefers Inflation Over Deflation – Why Asset Prices Refuse to Collapse”

    Why do asset markets keep rising?
    Why don’t they just crash and stay down?
    Why is there this unshakable belief that, eventually, prices will recover—and even go higher?

    It’s not just blind optimism.
    It’s because the system itself is designed to never allow prolonged asset deflation.

    💸 1. Cash Melts, Assets Float

    We already know this:
    Money loses value every year.
    The 2% target inflation rate isn’t random—it’s deliberate.

    Governments want prices to rise slowly over time.
    Why? Because deflation is far more dangerous than inflation.

    Deflation freezes consumption.
    Debt gets heavier.
    People stop acting, spending, building.

    That’s economic death—for politicians, corporations, and households alike.

    That’s why when asset markets wobble, governments step in.
    Because asset prices are approval ratings.

    If real estate, stocks, and corporate valuations tank, voters panic.
    So what do policymakers do?
    They inject liquidity—quantitative easing.
    Markets bounce back.
    Retail investors pile in late.
    Assets begin their upward climb once again.

    📉 2. Declines Are Moments. Recovery Is the System.

    Corrections happen.
    Sometimes we can even predict them.
    But we can’t time the bottom.

    If you think, “It’ll fall more,”
    chances are, it’s already rebounding.
    If you think, “This must be the bottom,”
    one more leg down is probably coming.

    Veteran investors eventually stop timing the market.
    Instead, they bet on the system:

    “Markets always recover.
    So all I need is the readiness to buy when they fall.”

    🐍 3. Inflation Is a Monster—But the System Is Bigger

    Yes, inflation is a problem.
    Real wages shrink.
    Daily life gets harder.
    Currency quietly melts away.

    But here’s the irony:
    People hate inflation,
    but governments fear deflation even more.

    So what survives is this quiet, unspoken equation:

    Sustainable, controlled inflation = Upward-trending asset prices

    In other words:
    The system ensures your money loses value—
    so that your house doesn’t.

    (📌 Welcome to Korea, where “assets” basically means real estate, and stocks are just bonus side quests.)

    🧭 4. In the End, Only One Thing Matters

    Even knowing all this,
    we still mess up the timing.

    Opportunities appear when we have no cash.
    And when we finally have liquidity, it feels too early to act.

    So what do we really need?

    • Liquidity: The readiness to act when others can’t.
    • Patience: To move at the market’s pace, not our own.
    • Courage: To take a step forward when everyone else is afraid.

    “Markets recover.
    Even those who understand this struggle to hold on.
    In the end, only the patient survive.”

    📌 Next Up:
    “Why Inflation Is a Silent Tax – The Structure That Slowly Melts Your Wealth

    #Inflation #Deflation #AssetMarket #RealEstate #InvestmentStrategy #QuantitativeEasing #PatiencePays #LottoEconomy #KoreanEconomy #FinancialPhilosophy

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  • If I Pick 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Every Week… Will It Ever Hit?

    Sometimes, I wonder:
    Instead of picking random lottery numbers every week,
    what if I just chose the same set of numbers—quietly, consistently, forever?

    Even a sequence that looks ridiculous, like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6—
    what if sticking with it, without wavering, could somehow lead to a small miracle?

    This isn’t really about lottery strategy.
    It’s more of a quiet reflection on probability, belief, and the strange beauty of repetition.

    🎲 The Wide Spread of Randomness

    Most people choose different numbers every week when playing the lottery.
    It feels like the “proper” way to test your luck.

    In fact, statistically speaking, random selection tends to spread winning chances evenly
    across all prize tiers—from the jackpot to the smallest payout.
    By resetting your picks each time, you enjoy the benefit of broad coverage.

    More variety = more reach.

    🔁 The Power of Sticking With One Set

    But choosing the same numbers every time? That’s a different game.
    While the odds of hitting the jackpot don’t change,
    you do increase your chances of partial matches over time.

    For example: matching five numbers and winning third prize.
    In these middle-tier prizes (3rd to 5th),
    fixed-number strategies sometimes show slightly stronger results.
    Maybe it’s just a coincidence—
    but I’d call it a “hint of mean reversion from consistent effort.”

    It’s less about math, more about belief.
    A strange kind of confidence that says:
    “If I keep going with these numbers, someday they’ll come up.”

    💡 Repetition Is Sometimes a Form of Willpower

    Choosing random numbers isn’t bad.
    It means surrendering to chance.

    But sticking with the same numbers? That’s different.
    That’s a stance. A fight against randomness.
    An effort to turn chance into a companion, not a stranger—
    even if the numbers make people laugh or look foolish.

    Repetition is sometimes will.
    Will breeds hope.
    And sometimes, hope leads to outrageous outcomes.

    🎯 So Yes—Today I Pick 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

    With a ridiculous number, and a ridiculous belief.
    The odds may be fair,
    but willpower is asymmetrical.

    And if you’re reading this right now—
    maybe someday, you’ll remember this post.
    Maybe it’ll be in the news:

    “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Wins the Jackpot!”

    And someone will say,

    “This post was a prophecy…”

    🧾 A Note on Lotto in Korea:
    In South Korea, Lotto is the most widely played lottery game.
    Players select six numbers between 1 and 45, and the draw happens weekly.
    Despite its long odds, it remains incredibly popular—
    not just as a game of chance, but as a small ritual of hope.

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  • “Escape from the Edges: How a Regular Polygon Becomes a Circle”

    A regular triangle feels sharp.
    A square feels stable.
    A regular pentagon has the symmetry of a well-balanced star.

    But what about a regular polygon with a thousand sides?

    I found myself wondering: What lies at the end of the sequence—triangle, square, pentagon, hexagon, …, regular n-gon?
    If the number of vertices in a polygon increases infinitely, is it still a polygon? Or something else?

    🧮 From Shapes to Infinity

    In school, we learned about triangles, squares, pentagons—basic geometric shapes.
    But rarely did we ask: What happens beyond that?

    One question led me down this path:

    “If a regular polygon has an infinite number of vertices, does it become a circle?”

    It sounds simple. But to go beyond intuition and into proof, we need math.

    🤖 The Role of GPT

    To explore this idea, I turned to GPT.

    A vague curiosity began taking mathematical form.
    GPT showed how the coordinates of a regular n-gon’s vertices could be expressed as:


    Pₖ = (r cos(2πk/n), r sin(2πk/n))  for k = 0, 1, ..., n–1

    At first glance, it looks complex. But in essence, it places n points evenly around a circle’s edge.
    Connect the dots, and you have a regular n-gon.

    Now imagine increasing n.
    100 sides.
    1,000 sides.
    1,000,000 sides.

    As the number of vertices increases, the space between them decreases—
    and the straight lines begin to resemble a curve.

    ➕ A Circle as a Mathematical Limit

    Mathematically, the perimeter of a regular n-gon can be approximated as:

    arduino 
    limₙ→∞ (n/2) × 2r × sin(π/n) = 2πr

    In other words:
    As n approaches infinity, the polygon’s perimeter approaches the circumference of a circle, 2πr.

    So yes—a regular polygon becomes a circle as n grows without bound.

    Not just visually, but provably, mathematically.

    🔍 From Wonder to Insight

    The idea that a triangle could eventually evolve into a circle, simply by increasing its sides—
    that’s not just a curious observation.
    It’s a profound insight into how number transforms shape.

    And in this journey, GPT wasn’t just a tool.
    It became a translator between my imagination and the language of mathematics—
    a companion who helped turn intuition into expression.

    That’s why I wrote this post.
    To remember the moment a simple thought turned into a small discovery.

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  • “I’m an INTJ.”

    To some, those four letters might sound cold, calculated, or robotic.
    But to me, they’ve always meant something quieter.
    Someone who quietly imagines,
    laughs softly at their own thoughts,
    and finds patterns invisible to others.

    I’ve always loved building ideas in my head—like assembling a puzzle.
    I never cared much for other people’s expectations,
    and I enjoyed watching my thoughts stretch out infinitely in every direction.

    When I was younger, I loved books that sparked that kind of thinking.
    Stories where I, as the main character, would be dropped into ancient Egypt,
    solving mysteries one by one like a cerebral treasure hunt.
    Those books gave me the gift of mental travel.

    It wasn’t fantasy for the sake of escape—
    it was stories where logic, structure, and problem-solving intertwined.
    That’s what I loved.

    As a high school student, I read a lot of historical fiction.
    More than the unreality of fantasy,
    I found it fascinating to see how people in the past
    might have actually thought, judged, and acted.

    Maybe that’s why, over the years,
    some people—only half-joking—have asked,
    “Are you on the spectrum or something?”
    Perhaps it was my quietness.
    Or maybe it was that something always seemed to be happening inside my head,
    even when I said nothing.

    I once had a friend in college who, out of nowhere,
    told me they were deeply curious about how my mind worked.
    I wasn’t sure how to respond.

    Even now, when I write,
    I often return to those mental journeys.
    I want to tell stories the way I’ve felt them,
    even if no one ever called it the “right” way.
    And if someone reading my work could join me on that journey,
    that would mean the world.

    I hope this series becomes that kind of space.

    If the world I’ve quietly imagined and built
    turns out to be meaningful,
    maybe it’s because you’re reading this—
    and that’s how I’ll know it was worth building at all.

    About MBTI:
    MBTI (Myers–Briggs Type Indicator) is a personality classification system based on psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions. In South Korea, it gained widespread popularity only recently, especially among younger generations who often use it as a casual way to describe personality types or start conversations.

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  • You Were Smart from the Start.

    You were smart from the very beginning.
    And the fact that you clicked on this post and are reading this sentence proves it.

    We live in a world overflowing with content.
    With just a flick of your finger, you’re offered flashy images, short videos, and quick laughs.
    In a time like this, choosing to read means your brain is craving something deeper.

    Reading is compressing someone else’s life into your own experience.

    Ten years of regret, five years of contemplation, or months of quiet observation
    can pass through your mind in just a few minutes.
    Absorbing the thoughts of others in condensed time—
    that alone is already an extraordinary intellectual act.

    And in the end, reading is also an act of courage:
    to accept things you’ve never experienced before.

    Every real change begins with the reader.

    Most writing disappears without changing a thing.
    But sometimes, a sentence can stop a person in their tracks.
    Sometimes, a single word lingers in the ear
    and gently shifts the direction of a life—just slightly, but unmistakably.

    That possibility was opened… because you chose to read.

    Now, let me begin telling you my story.

    If Episode 0 was the epilogue, then this post is the very first scene.
    The world I’ve seen and felt,
    the moments I paused and reflected,
    and the stories I discovered within them—
    I’ll share them one by one.

    So please,
    join me on this journey.

    Because reading
    is the most intelligent way for our thoughts to meet.

    This post was inspired by content from EBS Humanities, a public educational broadcaster in South Korea.

    And always remember:
    The very act of reading already makes you extraordinary.

  • Episode 0: Starting My Writing Experiment with GPT

    Hello, everyone!
    My name is Kim, and I live in South Korea. I’m not a professional writer — rather, I’m someone who loves exploring ideas through conversations.

    Recently, I began talking with GPT, an AI language model, and these conversations have become the foundation of my thoughts and reflections. This blog is a record of that experimental journey — a place where “I” and “AI” create together.

    Unlike traditional writing, what you’ll find here are not polished articles, but traces of dialogue — stream-of-consciousness musings that capture my personal discoveries and insights.

    This space is not about finished works, but about sharing the process and experiments along the way. I’m excited to document this journey with GPT and hope to connect with readers who are curious and open to exploring new ideas alongside me.

    Thank you for joining me on this new beginning.

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