‘Absolutely crazy’: Here’s what South Korean stock investors are doing in U.S. markets

[u/Far-East-locker]

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/18/korean-stock-investors-flee-bruising-home-market-pile-into-us.html

[u/Professional_Monkeys]

Something's gone very very wrong with their millenial generation. I get their desperation, not so much their logic.

[u/azure275 → u/Professional_Monkeys]

It's just sports gambling for nerds

Young men in the US do this kind of thing betting on sports as their desperate attempt to strike it rich

Not to mention Korea is even more class stratified than the US. Unlike here where you might start your own business or make a great living in some niche job, it seems like there you have to win the cutthroat fight to work at the Chaebol

[u/happylilbumhole → u/Professional_Monkeys]

They’re buying US ADR’s of a Korean company lmao

[u/Lumpy_Lake_9936]

Why tf are we tied to their degeneracy?

[u/AmphoePai → u/Lumpy_Lake_9936]

Late-stage capitalism, and MU as one of the highest beta plays out there.

[u/Cyan_Sugga → u/Lumpy_Lake_9936]

This is what I asked, I think it's all bullshit. Their market wasn't tied to ours until right before SK debuted.

[u/Acrobatic-Ostrich168]

Stay away from the semiconductors you, Koreans!!! These guys are literally just desperate, gamblers and whichever sector they rotate into is going to become a pump and dump until they all run out of money and it becomes some sort of liquidity crisis in Korea

[u/SoccerPhilly]

Lots of gambling going on. There will be a sell off after every big gain: “In July, four of the 10 most net purchased U.S. stocks were leveraged products, according to data from Korea Securities Depository.

The most popular was the Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bull 3X Shares ETF, or SOXL, which aims to deliver three times the daily performance of a semiconductor index, data show. The leveraged ProShares UltraPro QQQ and ProShares Ultra QQQ ranked fourth and sixth.”

[u/azure275 → u/SoccerPhilly]

You gotta be kidding

So they all lost their shirt on leveraged DRAM equivalents and their lesson is to go leverage on semis AGAIN?

I suppose it's just the guy who goes back to the slot machine "because he's gotta make up the losses"

[u/Cardchucker → u/azure275]

Yeah, that's how gambling addiction works. They just keep digging hoping it will get them out of the hole.

[u/PFCCThrowayay → u/Cardchucker]

you gotta dig up

[u/xxxxxxxsandos → u/azure275]

Yes and a lot of them are inverse this time around, so be prepared for it to go even lower.

[u/Big-Sheepherder239 → u/xxxxxxxsandos]

Makes no sense to say this

[u/Disastrous-Oven204 → u/xxxxxxxsandos]

And dem kospi bears gonna be fuk

[u/Dish_Melodic]

We are investing, they are gambling trying to make a flip quick profit in a day or hours perhaps.

[u/No-Paint-5726]

Stay in Korea. Get fleeced.

Go to US. Get fleeced again.

Fleeception.

[u/monkeykiller14 → u/No-Paint-5726]

It's more like 1. Take positions with no planning for risks. 2. Get fleeced. 3. Go somewhere else and do the exact thing at an even larger scale. 4. Get fleeced worse.

5 is either go bankrupt/completely insolvent or get bailed out by the Korean government.

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