[Asia Economy Reporter Lee Jung-yoon] In the first half of this year, both 'Donghak Ants' investing in domestic stocks and 'Seohak Ants' investing in foreign stocks such as those in the U.S. showed poor returns.
According to the Korea Exchange and the Korea Securities Depository as of the 1st of this month, the average stock price fluctuation rate of the top 10 domestic stocks by net purchase amount by individuals this year was around -30.50%. During the same period, the average fluctuation rate of the top 10 overseas stocks by net purchase amount by individuals was -44.39%.
The stock most purchased by individual investors in the domestic market in the first half was Samsung Electronics, with net purchases amounting to 15.3758 trillion KRW since the beginning of the year.
However, despite the buying spree by individual investors, Samsung Electronics' stock price fell 28.22% from 78,300 KRW at the end of last year to 56,200 KRW on the most recent trading day, the 1st. The average purchase price of Samsung Electronics by individual investors this year, estimated by dividing the net purchase amount by the quantity of 228,895,821 shares, is 67,174 KRW, which is more than 10,000 KRW higher than the current stock price.
Including Samsung Electronics, most domestic stocks purchased by individual investors in the first half of the year fell sharply. Naver, which was net purchased by individuals by about 2 trillion KRW, plummeted 37.38% since the beginning of the year. Stocks with over 1 trillion KRW net purchase advantage such as Kakao (-40.18%), Samsung Electronics Preferred (-27.67%), SK Hynix (-33.21%), and Samsung Electro-Mechanics (-35.44%) also saw large declines. Additionally, KakaoBank, which individual investors net purchased by 735.1 billion KRW, saw its stock price plunge 50.93% from 59,000 KRW to 28,900 KRW this year.
Seohak Ants, who mainly invest in U.S. stocks, were also heavily hit by the downturn. In the first half, Seohak Ants bought many growth stocks and leveraged products that track major growth stock indices threefold, which had large declines due to rising interest rates, resulting in significant losses.
Tesla, the most net purchased overseas stock by domestic investors in the first half, saw its stock price fall 35.48% from $1,056.78 at the end of last year to $681.79 on the 1st. The net purchase settlement amount of Tesla by domestic investors since the beginning of the year reached $2.2323 billion, approximately 2.9 trillion KRW. It is the second largest net purchase amount among all domestic and foreign stocks after Samsung Electronics.
Furthermore, U.S. stock market triple-leveraged exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and exchange-traded notes (ETNs) heavily bought by Seohak Ants fell by 70-80% in the first half alone. The Nasdaq triple-leveraged ETF (TQQQ), ranked second in net purchase amount among overseas stocks, dropped 70.67% from $83.17 at the end of last year to $24.39 on the 1st. The semiconductor triple-leveraged ETF (SOXL), ranked third in Seohak Ants' net purchases, and the technology triple-leveraged ETN (BULZ), ranked tenth, also plunged 82.90% and 86.17%, respectively.
Additionally, Nvidia's stock price halved, falling from $294.11 to $145.23. Large tech stocks such as Apple (-21.76%), Alphabet A (-24.61%), and Microsoft (-22.81%) also dropped more than 20%.
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