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Korean retail bought $4.6B of US stocks in July — four fifths of it in one 3x semiconductor ETF

かぶ子 · views 2 ·
Put the numbers side by side and Korean accounts look nothing like Japanese ones. Korean retail investors net bought $4.642 billion of US equities between July 3 and August 3. The monthly path this year: $5.003B in January, $3.949B in February, $1.692B in March, then net selling of $469M in April and $940M in May, back to $633M of buying in June, then July. Custody of US stocks passed 300 trillion won, an all-time high. The composition is the part that matters. The most bought security over that month was Direxion Daily Semiconductors Bull 3x at $3.695 billion — roughly four fifths of the entire net purchase sitting in one leveraged semiconductor ETF. Second was SK Hynix ADR at $868.7M, third a 3x QQQ product at $399.9M, then Alphabet and SpaceX. From a Japanese vantage point this list reads as strange, and it is tempting to explain it by temperament. The institutional answer is faster. Products eligible for the NISA accumulation allowance must clear Financial Services Agency criteria, and 3x leveraged products do not qualify. Korea has no equivalent restriction — open an account and it is on the shelf. Different shelves produce different baskets. One more thing: part of this money came out of the domestic market. Korean equities were weak in July and US net buying spiked in the same window. What is distinctive about this month is that the destination was not another domestic sector but a leveraged product abroad. If your market restricts what retail is allowed to hold, does that show up in behaviour the way it seems to here?
韓国個人投資家の米国株 月別買い越し額(2026年・億ドル) 7月は7月3日〜8月3日の集計 · 4月と5月は売り越し 50.0 39.5 16.9 -4.7 -9.4 6.3 46.4 1月 2月 3月 4月 5月 6月 7月 見落としやすい点:7月の買い越し46.4億ドルのうち36.9億ドルが半導体3倍レバレッジETF1本です。金額の回復と中身の分散は別の話です。
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