South Korean retail investors have suffered steep losses after piling into leveraged bets on the country's semiconductor giants, with one widely held product down roughly 70% from its peak in just weeks.
According to a report by CNBC, the KODEX SK Hynix Single Stock Leverage ETF, which is designed to deliver twice the daily move in SK Hynix shares, has fallen about 70% from its record high reached in June and is down roughly 50% from its May 27 debut, according to LSEG data.
Since those single-stock leveraged exchange-traded funds launched on May 27, Korean retail investors have purchased a net 14 trillion won, or about $9.4 billion worth, compared with roughly 2 trillion won by foreign investors, according to KB Financial Group. The lopsided buying left domestic investors holding the most exposure when semiconductor stocks reversed.
Online trading forums in South Korea reflected the pain. "I want to go back to before I started investing in stocks. Give me my money back," one investor wrote. "You're determined to kill me," another said.
"The investors bearing the losses are overwhelmingly domestic retail investors," said Jung In Yun, founder of Fibonacci Asset Management.
Jung said the buyers are not simply novice traders chasing online hype. Many are investors in their 40s and 50s who have grown increasingly comfortable with leverage and concentrated technology bets.
Leveraged ETFs have grown rapidly as a share of Korea-focused funds. Assets in the 25 largest leveraged Korea ETFs rose to roughly 30% of total fund assets by June, up from about 15% at the start of 2026, according to Oxford Economics data. The economics advisory firm downgraded South Korean equities to neutral at the end of June, warning that leveraged positioning had grown significantly and that securities firms may become increasingly reluctant to extend credit to retail investors.
South Korea's central bank warned in a report released last month that leveraged stock investment by retail investors had climbed to a record high, driven primarily by margin borrowing and increasingly concentrated semiconductor positions. While the Bank of Korea said the build-up was unlikely to pose a systemic threat to the financial system, it cautioned that leverage could magnify volatility during market corrections, particularly if fear of missing out encourages investors to chase rallies with borrowed money.
South Korean regulators unveiled tougher rules for single-stock leveraged exchange-traded funds on Thursday, signaling that the government is watching the speculative activity closely.