For those who don't know what's going on in Korea, KOSPI is up 3x in the last year and a large amount of HBM employees have made huge amounts of bonus pay. This has led to an insane FOMO frenzy in a society that's already very competitive.
Add to that, stock gains in Korea are often used to finance housing purchases (or real estate investment) so many retail investors are scared of being "locked out" of housing (which is a requisite status symbol for dating or marriage) if they're not making the same capital gains others are.
Currently Korean social media is full of stories of leveraged day traders who've gotten rich the past year, HBM employees who've made bonuses worth decades of salary (e.g. memes of Samsung employees in luxury cars), etc. Lots of comments along the lines of "everyone is getting rich except me". It's all reminiscent of the crypto frenzy in the US a few years ago but way more intense and concentrated.
I wish we had a word for this, where everyone’s getting rich, there’s a run on stocks, but prices of assets are all going up. Some people are missing out completely whereas a select few hoard wealth in other forms. And of course the government starting to notice and trying to intervene.
With housing their being so cheap, what the hell is the problem anyway? It's impossible to have expensive real estate in a country that's dying out fast.
Housing usually is needed for living. Not a status symbol for dating. I see how it can help the same way as not starving to death will also help with dating, but the framing is odd.
The story we were telling young people that if they apply themselves, go to school and get a job they'll be able to afford family, house, vacations is moving further and further away for more and more people.
The turn towards financial nihilism will continue.
While "financial nihilism" is part of it, I think we should be putting even more attention towards the forces that are trying to deliberately encourage it for profit.
Kind of like pathological gambling: Sure, some people are susceptible, but there's also an entire industry around finding them and making them succumb.
The threshold for greed is higher than the median net worth of an American. We tell people they need "generational" wealth to a make it in this country because housing, education, and healthcare are all so expensive
The problem isn't leveraged funds, it's margin on leveraged funds.
Leveraged funds are the safest way for the average investor to get access to leverage because unlike margin there is no risk of margin calls, and your money generally won't go to zero unlike options which are vastly more complicated and can expire.
The reality is that using leveraged funds (or any leverage) is a completely rational move because the average person will never retire wealthy unless they're already making a tech salary or similar.
Investing has always been gambling, even Warren Buffet made his biggest early wins on all-in bets.
Around the Evergrande collapse there were stories about Chinese retail investors who had pushed money into their domestic real estate industry’s stocks.
Also you might painting too wide a brush with “the West”. I wouldn’t assume that Americans and, say, Austrians have similar exposure to public markets.
US household assets are fairly well distributed between real-estate and equity markets. China for example previously had ~70% of its household wealth tied up in real-estate, which has suffered enormous declines over the past four or five years.
That said, there's no question that US households have grown fat on the massive expansion of the tech giants. A one trillion $ market cap was shocking not long ago, now you've got Apple and Nvidia at $4-$5 trillion, each about as valuable as China's top 25-30 stocks combined. The US wealth base is highly exposed to a PE multiple compression event, which is likely whenever the bubbly valuations centered around the AI boom reduce.
Also to put a reference figure on it, China's top 500 stocks are roughly worth $11.5 trillion. Nvidia + Apple are worth a combined ~$9.6 trillion.
Both NVIDIA and Apple derive much of their wealth from off-shored manufacturing to… drumroll… China! (PRC+ROC)
If China decides to take over Taiwan and nationalises TMSC, redirecting their top tier silicon to 100% Chinese companies then what are the American firms worth?
Indeed. It's so much bigger (in notional terms) than the underlying stock market that you can manipulate it by making large bets in the derivatives market, then move the underlying cash markets with much smaller bets, and collect profit.
That is what Jane Street (IIRC) was accused of. Some of its traders then went to another hedge fund and did the same trick there, reducing Jane Street's profit, and ended up being sued by Jane Street. (BTW, Jane Street claims it was not manipulation, but basis trade arbitrage.)
Especially in Korea, I know there's a sense of despair in the young adult population on their future. How will they afford to get married, have kids, have a house? Leads to chasing financial outcomes that are uncertain - crypto boom in Korea years back is an example
Add to that, stock gains in Korea are often used to finance housing purchases (or real estate investment) so many retail investors are scared of being "locked out" of housing (which is a requisite status symbol for dating or marriage) if they're not making the same capital gains others are.
Currently Korean social media is full of stories of leveraged day traders who've gotten rich the past year, HBM employees who've made bonuses worth decades of salary (e.g. memes of Samsung employees in luxury cars), etc. Lots of comments along the lines of "everyone is getting rich except me". It's all reminiscent of the crypto frenzy in the US a few years ago but way more intense and concentrated.
The turn towards financial nihilism will continue.
Kind of like pathological gambling: Sure, some people are susceptible, but there's also an entire industry around finding them and making them succumb.
Leveraged funds are the safest way for the average investor to get access to leverage because unlike margin there is no risk of margin calls, and your money generally won't go to zero unlike options which are vastly more complicated and can expire.
The reality is that using leveraged funds (or any leverage) is a completely rational move because the average person will never retire wealthy unless they're already making a tech salary or similar.
Investing has always been gambling, even Warren Buffet made his biggest early wins on all-in bets.
(Which is not to imply that these are smart men).
https://www.reutersconnect.com/item/south-korean-retail-inve...
But it seems there's still a lot in their FA phase in the FAFO cycle.
Also you might painting too wide a brush with “the West”. I wouldn’t assume that Americans and, say, Austrians have similar exposure to public markets.
That said, there's no question that US households have grown fat on the massive expansion of the tech giants. A one trillion $ market cap was shocking not long ago, now you've got Apple and Nvidia at $4-$5 trillion, each about as valuable as China's top 25-30 stocks combined. The US wealth base is highly exposed to a PE multiple compression event, which is likely whenever the bubbly valuations centered around the AI boom reduce.
Also to put a reference figure on it, China's top 500 stocks are roughly worth $11.5 trillion. Nvidia + Apple are worth a combined ~$9.6 trillion.
If China decides to take over Taiwan and nationalises TMSC, redirecting their top tier silicon to 100% Chinese companies then what are the American firms worth?
China is not going to sabotage themselves like that.
That is what Jane Street (IIRC) was accused of. Some of its traders then went to another hedge fund and did the same trick there, reducing Jane Street's profit, and ended up being sued by Jane Street. (BTW, Jane Street claims it was not manipulation, but basis trade arbitrage.)
Of course, 9 out of 10 gambler end up in the red.