"Hmmm" - that was a sign of exhaustion, even though he was just waking up around 1:47 AM from a short nap. Though it was early in the morning, sleep seemed an impossible luxury. Being in a country with high corruption, few well-paying jobs, and a struggling economy. "Guess we'll give it another shot?" he thought.
Witty, a 27-year-old introvert and self-taught trader who was overconfident and undercapitalized, felt his heart race, mirroring the flashing red light on his trading screen. The bluish glow of his laptop, which displayed XAU/USD, a currency and commodity pair in perpetual chaos, illuminated half of his small bedroom.
The day seemed typical as Witty got up to make cold coffee. He sipped from his chipped mug and sat back on the couch before leaning forward to operate his laptop.
His last position, a heavily leveraged short on XAU/USD, had turned against him in the past hour, lurching into a drawdown that risked blowing his entire account. A margin call warning blinked in the corner of his terminal, pulsing like a warning beacon - "WARNING: Margin Level at 18%. Close positions or deposit funds immediately."
Witty's fingers hovered over the keyboard. In that moment, greed and fear wrestled inside him. He had promised himself he would hold through the fluctuations, convinced the market would snap back in his favor. But now, the drawdown threatened to swallow him whole. "This is just a fakeout and market manipulation. It'll come back," he muttered, jaw tight.
His eyes burned from hours of screen time. Coffee, cold and bitter, sat in a cracked mug beside him. The candlestick on the chart ticked again, another pip moving against him, when a sharp ping from his phone broke his trance:
2:48 AM – Ping![Trade Alert]: Margin Call Triggered. Position Liquidated.[Balance]: $0.94
A brutal silence fell. The blinking red warning disappeared. The chart kept its relentless dance, as if nothing had happened, as if weeks of trading hadn't been suddenly wiped out. Witty stared at the screen. Empty. Numb. Then—rage.
He gritted his teeth, face flushing with shame and disbelief. "Damn! I knew it! I knew they were hunting stops!" he barked, voice cracking. "That reversal was fake—manipulated!"
He grabbed his Apple MacBook, hands shaking, and slammed his palm down on the trackpad. The click echoed sharply in the dark room. The sleek glass pad cracked and fractured beneath his fist. A fine web of cracks spread across the surface like a broken trendline.
He threw the laptop onto his bed and stormed across the room, pacing and sad. His heart was racing faster than the market's volatility.
"I risked everything on that setup,"he hissed. "How do I get more capital after blowing up this account?"
He sank into his chair, breath ragged. The screens glowed on, mocking him. His vision blurred. Exhaustion swept in like a tide, drowning the adrenaline.
He closed his eyes, intending to rest for just a moment, hoping to quell the burning rage.
[System Loading… Connecting to Liquidity Server…]
And just like that… he wasn't in his room anymore.
Witty opened his eyes. Everything in his room had disappeared. He was lying on a floating platform made of candlesticks, hovering in a strange sky where price lines shimmered and twisted like vines. Above him, a massive chart canvas stretched across the sky, candles forming and deforming in real time.
He tried to stand. His feet sank slightly into the ground—like stepping on semi-liquid data. Around him, mountains curved upward like sloping trendlines. Rivers of numbers ran through the valleys. Bears scattered in the far west, and bulls prowled to the west.
He scrambled to his feet. Panic flared: "What the… Where I'm I?" Witty whispered. "Hello! Anyone here?"
"You are now logged into: THE MARKET MATRIX.""Status: INVISIBLE ENTITY""Mission: SURVIVE THE MARKET. MASTER THE SYSTEM. EXIT WITH YOUR SOUL." A voice gentle and measured echoed from behind.
The voice that sounds familiar, Witty thought. More like the voice in my head trying to explain everything I ever read about the markets, "Is this a dream or some sort of illusion?"He asked
"No," the voice said. "It's your reckoning. Every trade you placed without detailed knowledge, precision, and proper risk management brought you here. The Market remembers."
"Who are you? And what do you want from me?"Witty asked, and the voice replied, "Your guide; if you'll let me help you."
He stumbled back and fell on his knees as his heart raced. His voice felt raw. "This… this can't be real."
The voice replied - "Real enough. Here, every candle is life or death. You're invisible to most, but invisibility won't save you from the bulls and bears' traps. You have to become something to survive down here."
A chill ran down his spine. The air felt foreign, heavy with a cold mist. Looking down, he saw his hands, transparent and flickering in and out of view, and so was his body. A distant roar split the air, and the ground trembled. To the west, a pack of heavily armored bears rambled across an open plain of reds. To the east, shadows slithered among herds of bulls on an open plain of greens: The Bull Enforcers, merciless and hungry for stranded bears.
Witty's breath caught. He glanced at the whole scene with disbelief. "How do I… thread these markets?" he whispered.
And the voice answered like an all-knowing algorithm. "First, you learn to respect risk. You need to master being fearful and fearless, because every move here costs you something. You'll need to trust that knowledge is key in this matrix and never act based on just an impulse. Let the market's rhythm guide you. I'll always be here to guide you through it all, and I have this feeling you will surely make it out of here, make sure victorious over the snare of these vicious markets. Let's begin."
Witty rose to his feet, encouraged and fully ready for his mission, which is to survive the market, master his emotions, and unlock the secret behind it all.