Artemis Fowl and the Moon Gold Stock Adventure

Part I.

Mr. Panick

Authors Note: This is a revised edition of my story Artemis Fowl Plays the Market. It has more foot notes, and the plot is changed slightly.

Summery: In his earlier adventures Artemis has battled evil fairies, other human geniuses and trolls. But can he handle a truly dangerous and unpredictable adversary sometimes known as Mr. Market? The author cautions his teen readers that shorting stocks or other stock market speculation is risky unless you are as brilliant as Artemis. Please exercise care when trying this at home - especially with adult supervision.

Disclaimer: The characters in this story belong to Eoin Colfer.

Artemis Fowl, sighed as he typed another large sell order for the last of the MSHIP stock into the Fowl family trust online trading account. Moonship Corporation had rallied from below 20 up to almost 25 over just the past two weeks. Another nice profit. Artemis glanced around his office at over 15 monitors with global news feeds, scientific channels and even a tap into fairy news channel being broadcast from deep underground (1). On the CNBC monitor the Moonship President Thennek Ayl was proudly speaking about her company's big contract win to supply spaceships to NASA for the lunar base project. Ayl was quite slender and looked like she might be more at home leading a gymnastics class than a major aerospace corporation.

Artemis found the Moonship spaceship supply contract news to be very anti-climactic. It wasn't just that he had hacked into the "secure" Moonship Computer corporate network and their main competitors last week to compare their spaceship designs and determine the most likely contract winner. NASA's belated plans to build a lunar stations were decades behind the fairies. The fairies had naturally already explored the moon quite thoroughly with their shuttles, but no longer bothered to travel there much anymore as they had not really found anything of great interest on this ancient dead rock.

As a result of Artemis's vow to avoid illegal enterprises, stock market profits were now the primary (2) source of income for the Fowl family (3). Making money at stocks sometimes almost seemed too easy for Artemis. He was a true genius and many of the people trading stocks frankly seemed to have below average intelligence. Stocks often seemed to move based on emotions, irrelevant information or rather simplistic press reports. Trading stocks was every bit as profitable as stealing fairy gold and was certainly less risky. There was certainly little risk of being trapped by a competing genius or fed to hungry rolls. Artemis sometimes thought he missed the challenge.

The next day Artemis spotted Moonship President Ayl Thennek on CNBC yet again and noticed that MSHIP stock was up another 5 points to 30. Although he had sold all the Moonship stock at a nice profit yesterday, Artemis was intrigued and turned up the volume. Moonship was following up its NASA spaceship contract win by spending a fortune of its own money to send spaceships on gold mining expeditions to the moon. Artemis laughed as he pondered how he could be part of a species that was this dumb. None of the lunar geological surveys (4) suggested that this venture had any potential whatsoever. Artemis could not decide who was dumber – the president of Moonship or the mindless sheep (5) who were eagerly bidding up the price of MSHIP stock based on this ridiculous news story.

Artemis did not normally short (6) stocks, but this opportunity was too easy to pass up and he began to short MSHIP stock. The next day Ayl Thennek was back on CNBC yet again announcing that she was so confident of this lunar gold mining venture that the company's name was being changed from Moonship Corp. to Moon Gold Corp. Artemis knew that even if there was gold on the moon, the costs of human space travel were so high that it could not possibly be mined profitably.

Artemis had calculated it would cost at least $1,000 / ounce to mine lunar gold (in the unlikely event there was any) and another $2,000 / ounce just to transport it back to earth. With gold trading at under $700 / ounce there was no way that a lunar gold mining venture could ever be profitable. Artemis continued to short more and more MSHIP stock as it rallied another 5 points as Thennek gave a press conference to another hoard of eager reporters. The CNBC reporters seemed to faithfully report every claim that Moon Gold made as if it was fact. He had never seen people who were not actually mesmerized follow anything so blindly.

Over the next couple of weeks MGOLD (as the new ticker symbol was now known) stock continued to soar. The hopeless quest to mine gold on the moon seemed to have created a speculative frenzy. Just to be doubly sure, Artemis had already looked up the fairy lunar geological records for the proposed Moon Gold mining sites and verified that they were unlikely to contain any gold.

As an added precaution Artemis even had his friend Mulch personally review the geological surveys. Dwarves are even more fixated on gold than fairies. Mulch had a good laugh at the prospects of finding gold on the moon. He joked that Moon Gold Corp had a better chance of finding green cheese than gold at those sites. Confident in his knowledge that Moon Gold would go bust looking for gold, Artemis continued to short more and more MGOLD stock as it soared in a speculative frenzy.

Mulch even offered Artemis a couple of stock tips on other human gold stocks he had successfully speculated on.

"Honest detective work just doesn't pay nearly as well as my former occupation of liberating treasures from the wealthy" confided Mulch. "I have a certain lifestyle to maintain" Mulch continued. Mulch recounted how he had become interested in the stock market during his days living topside disguised as a human. He explained that he had enjoyed the challenge of lifting only the most priceless and heavily secured treasures from society's elite. Mulch always seemed to be crossing paths with wealthy investment bankers and traders while plying his former trade. This had piqued his interest in the stock market. Much to his surprise, Mulch discovered that he was almost as good at finding promising mining stocks as some of his much harder working dwarf relatives were at digging up the precious metal underground.

At long last the day arrived when Moon Gold would be giving a press conference to announce their initial mining results. Artemis waited gleefully for the Thennek press conference on CNBC to start. Failure would be announced and the stock would plummet allowing him to cover his now immense short position at a huge profit. Although Artemis had conditioned himself to be cool under pressure, his face became flush as Thennek spoke and the electronic ticker tape at the bottom of the screen showed MGOLD stock soaring up to $100 / share.

How could such a rich gold vein have been found at the bottom of that lunar crater? Artemis immediately realized his miscalculation. The gold could have been from a gold rich asteroid that created the lunar crater with its impact millions of years ago. And yet, the rally in MGOLD stock was still illogical. It would still costs more than the price of gold to transport it back to earth.

Artemis was busy gleefully calculating how many months MGOLD could continue this business folly before they ran out of cash and plunged into bankruptcy making their stock completely worthless. Just then, Minerva dropped in for one of her frequent visits. Artemis was a bit surprised when she burst into the room, but managed to quickly load a spreadsheet on one of the 15 monitors that had been showing a graphical image a more typical teenage male would enjoy.

Minerva had been a couple of years younger than Artemis but was now a year older as a result of his last adventure on a demon island suspended in time (7). Even with his trained mind, Artemis was finding the changes in Minerva to be a bit distracting. A rare blunder by Artemis last week had enabled Minerva to finally beat Artemis in one of their 3 dimensional chess matches. Other teenage males without the trained mind of Artemis certainly seemed quite distracted by Minerva.

Minerva surveyed the 15 monitors in Artemis's room and noticed that every single one of them was devoted to financial information. Even without her anonymous doctorate in psychology and 237 I.Q. she could tell that Artemis appeared quite stressed out and was no longer focused on his usual scientific research projects. "Oh Arty, don't you know that you're too smart to be playing the market?" asked Minerva. Minerva reminded Artemis of her stock market studies (8) and warned him to be careful. For a split nano-second, Artemis considered asking Minerva for a short term loan until his trading losses were reversed. He immediately thought better of it and lied about his continued trading gains.

The margin call (9) arrived that day from Artemis's broker. Fowl Manor had been paid off long ago with the proceeds from stolen fairy gold. Reluctantly Artemis tapped into the massive home equity line and wired money into his brokerage account to meet the margin call. Artemis was not broke yet, but he was running out of time and needed people to realize the folly of this MGOLD stock soon.

Fortunately, Artemis had a brilliant plan. He had lost a fortune as a passive short seller of MGOLD stock, but now he was going to get actively involved. He posed as a phony business professor called Dr. Blogal Noidepress and submitted articles on the Economics of lunar mining to the Wall St. Journal and the London Financial Times. People would surely sell their MGOLD stock once they realized that gold could never be economically transported from the Moon back to Earth. He was tempted to show the articles to Minerva. She would have undoubtedly laughed at an Economics Professor whose name looked a lot like Global Depression". No one else seemed to appreciate Artemis's humor and the articles were both business section headliners the next day.

As an added measure Artemis had even posted his Moon Gold transportation cost analysis on the yahoo finance message board for MGOLD stock and other such places. Many of the especially stupid and emotional traders seemed to follow the message board chatter more than traditional newspapers such as the Wall St. Journal. Artemis was expecting to see some recommendations and agreement with his brilliant message board posts which should really stand out. Instead Artemis found that his posts were greeted with unprintable name calling by anonymous posters who seemed incapable of constructing a coherent sentence or using a much needed spell checker. Artemis considered tracking down some of these posters and having Butler speak with them in person about the importance of good manners, but eventually decided this would be a waste of time.

MGOLD stock was down 10 points in pre-market trading the next morning before the market even opened. Ayl Thennek had scheduled yet another 9am press conference on CNBC. She would have to concede that there was no way that gold could ever be cost-effectively shipped from the moon back to earth. MGOLD stock would plummet further and Artemis's huge loss might yet be salvaged into a nice profit.

And yet MGOLD stock began to soar once more as soon as Thennek spoke. The ticker tape below the screen showed it rallying back to $100 and then reaching new heights of 110, 112 and 115 before finally stabilizing near $120. MGOLD had announced the creation of a Moon Bank to store their mined gold in an ultra safe vault on the moon. There was no need to ship gold back to earth. People would actually pay a premium for the privilege of owning gold in a location that was completely safe from all theft, war and earthly natural disasters.

Suddenly the thought of facing trolls or fairy geniuses did not seem so bad to Artemis. He had under estimated Ayl Thennek badly and would need to recover quickly to avoid losing Fowl Manor as well as the Fowl family fortune. Artemis would need to call in some favors to avoid plunging the Fowl family into financial ruin. Artemis cringed as he pictured Butler standing guard outside a new and much smaller Fowl residence located at the local trailer park.

Holy was aghast at the idea of meddling in the human stock market (10). She only reluctantly agreed to help Artemis after he reminded her how he had saved her life on their last adventure. A plaque in the lobby of Moon Gold headquarters welcomed visitors to view a model depicting their spaceships, mines and lunar bank. With this invitation to enter, Holly cloaked and invisibly slipped into the headquarters building.

Holly slipped through headquarters and out the back door to the huge adjacent spaceship launch area. Moon Gold would soon be launching another ship to their lunar mining expedition and Holy planned to be on it. Holly easily slipped aboard the ship and hid an in storage area that held human space suits. Seeing the awkward human spacesuits made Holly appreciate fairy technology more than ever. Foaly (11) would have considered the fragile breathing apparatus and bulky pressurization system to be especially vulnerable.

Holly was bored and uncomfortable during the long spaceflight to the moon. The human space suit storage area was quite confined. Out of boredom she began to study the primitive technology of the human spacesuits more closely. In the spacesuit boot she noticed what looked to be a hidden compartment. She opened it slightly and a few flecks of bright gold dust floated outside into the zero gravity of her compartment.

So why would MoonGold corp. be smuggling gold up to the moon? Suddenly it dawned on Holy. Artemis, Mulch and the Fairy geological surveys had been right all along about the dim prospects of finding gold on the moon. There never was gold on the moon. Could even the brilliant Artemis have fallen victim to such a simple stock fraud?

The astronauts would open their hidden boat compartments at the mining site to mix the gold flakes into the lunar soil. Tests would then confirm the presence of rich gold deposits and this is what had sent MGOLD stock soaring. Of course, the fraud would eventually have run its course and been discovered on its own. By that time Artemis would have been wiped out by another margin call and forced to cover his MGOLD short at a huge loss. Meanwhile AYL Thennek and the rest of the MGOLD insiders would have sold millions of shares of MGOLD stock at a huge profit and disappeared. As she replayed Ayl's last CNBC press conference in her mind, Holly thought that something looked very familiar about Thennek and people seemed to listen a bit too intently when she spoke. Then in the corner of the cargo rack Holly spotted something behind the spacesuits that totally altered her opinion about the whole situation. A standard issue LEP neutrino 2000 gun was stowed there. Fairies must be involved! Holly wondered if Artemis was in over his head this time…

Footnotes

1. Sometimes Artemis would even send Butler on an errand and watch programming on hidden channels that a more average male teenager with normal male hormone levels might find of interest. Being a teenager was really becoming quite a distraction.

2. Quite surprisingly, the sprawling Fowl Manor had also become a major source of family wealth as low corporate taxes, a booming Irish economy and rampant speculation had dramatically raised land prices even out here in the once quiet Irish country side.

3. Some people might think that by hacking into corporate networks, Artemis was guilty of "insider trading" and was breaking his vow to avoid criminal enterprises. Artemis reasoned that security was so non-existent on corporate networks like Moonship Corporation's "secure" network that he was almost being invited to snoop around. Besides, the stock market was not a "zero sum game" where his profits were stolen from someone else. Wealth was created when stocks went up and the stock market played an important role in financing legitimate business ventures. Of course, if Artemis had been a United States Citizen and the Securities and Exchange Commission had been aware of his trading activities they would not have viewed them quite so charitably.

4. The fairies were always looking for gold. If the advanced fairy geological surveys of the moon had not found enough gold to warrant a lunar mining venture, the chances of Moonship Corporation finding a rich gold deposit were almost nil.

5. The author sincerely apologizes to any animal activists who may be offended that the intellectual capabilities of sheep have been demeaned by comparing them to stock market traders. A double apology is offered to the country of New Zealand where the fine population of sheep is said to outnumber humans by 100 to 1.

6. Shorting a stock is a bet that it will decline in price. A short seller borrows stock from their broker and sells it. The short seller hopes that the stock will decline in price so that they can buy the borrowed stock back more cheaply than they sold it.

7. Modern physics has determined that time travel or suspension is quite impossible. Time travel would require particles that traveled faster than light. Physicists have determined that such faster than light particles can not exist. Physicists have named this non-existent faster than light particles "tachyons" – just in case they're wrong.

8. Minerva's stock market research had paradoxically determined that the stock market was so difficult to predict precisely because so many of its' participants are emotional and illogical. Mad geniuses such as Opal may be clever and diabolical opponents, but at least they follow a consistent logic that a genius such as Artemis may hope to discern. Minerva had found that it could take a long time for a crowd of irrational morons (more commonly referred to as traders, analysts and especially CNBC journalists) to arrive at the easily calculated fair market price for a given stock.

9. A margin call is a polite request from your broker to deposit additional funds in your brokerage account to cover trading losses. If you don't deposit funds, your broker will not so politely and rather abruptly close all your trading positions to prevent further losses beyond what you can cover. This invariably happens at the worst possible time imaginable.

10. Fairies considered the human stock market to be an especially barbaric institution. Fairies had long since adopted a much more civilized system of government funding for most large business ventures. Holly did have to admit that the human profit motive seemed to generate innovative business ventures. The Fairies were forced to belatedly copy such human ideas as Starbucks, Krispy Kreme Doughnuts and the Multiplex Cinema.

11. Holy would have been mortified to learn that Foaly had secretly enjoyed playing the human stock market until his secret Scott Trade brokerage account was wiped out during the great tech bubble of 2000.

Dedication

The author dedicates this story to his teenage daughter who is an Artemis Fowl fan and frequents the site. His daughter believes that this story is an insidious attempt to corrupt her with knowledge of the financial markets by invading her media of choice. This is not the case. Really.

About the Author

Mr. Panick normally posts a rather different kind of non-fiction writing, although certain other posters would consider all of his writings to be quite fictional. These writings can be read on the yahoo finance message boards by searching for posts by the author "mrpanick" or "dontpanick". The author claims to have a physics degree, work in the information technology field and moonlight for a hedge fund. Mr. Panick once infamously helped to rally a group of minority shareholders on the DJT Trump Hotels message board. Shareholders revolted to form an equity committee that successfully prevented a certain pompous billionaire from taking their equity without adequate compensation in bankruptcy. Maybe that will make an interesting story someday…