"Samsung Electronics and SK hynix swung 13% in a single day; I should have put my money in a 6% savings account instead" — a FOMO retail investor's regret after experiencing a bear market for the first time [World of Retail Investors]
- Input
- 2026-07-05 06:00:00
- Updated
- 2026-07-05 06:00:00
Office worker O, 29, opened a stock trading account for the first time in March this year. In every group chat with acquaintances, posts kept appearing saying, "I doubled my salary with Samsung Electronics," "and SK hynix delivered a 300% return in one year." At the time, social media and YouTube were flooded with provocative lines such as, "If you don't invest in stocks now, you'll regret it for the rest of your life. " News about a semiconductor supercycle and the KOSPI reaching 9,000 kept pouring in.It felt as if everyone around him was investing, and in a mood where everyone else seemed to be getting rich, O experienced fear of missing out (FOMO) for the first time. As a stock market beginner, O did not even think about looking at other stocks and bought the country's leading semiconductor names, Samsung Electronics and SK hynix.
At first, it was nothing but exciting. His account was in the green, and his gains grew every morning when he woke up.
As he began to enjoy investing, O broke his savings account and poured the cash into his brokerage balance. Even with a preferential rate, the savings account paid only 6%, so investing in stocks felt far wiser.But with KOSPI volatility now at extreme levels, O's account has ultimately fallen into the red after this week's additional plunge. O lamented, "I shouldn't have rushed in blindly, dazzled by a bull market," and "I wish I had never started investing in stocks." He explained that it was not just the losses that hurt. In a market that keeps bouncing and plunging from one day to the next, even looking at his account has become exhausting.A stock frenzy fueled by euphoria. the illusion that "everyone is making money except me" In the first half of this year, the domestic stock market staged a historic bull run, starting from the 4,200 level at the beginning of the year and breaking above 9,000.SK hynix surged more than 16-fold, from the 170,000-won range at the start of last year to its peak of 2,987,000 won this year, while Samsung Electronics also rose more than fivefold. Those record-setting numbers drew novice investors into the market.The problem was timing. By the time the index had already been in a broad uptrend and was eyeing the 9,000 level, latecomers swept up by herd mentality entered near the peak of the celebration, when the leading stocks were setting new highs.Structurally, they ended up absorbing shares near the top. While foreign investors and institutions were unloading profit-taking orders, individual investors, deceived by the illusion that "everyone else is making money," were left to absorb trillions of won in shares on their own each week, effectively buying at the very top.
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Investors with enough experience can usually endure a sharp selloff to some extent, but beginners are far more likely to panic and sell. A string of record-setting crashes.
98%. 3/Photo=Yonhap News Agency [Financial News] #.the harsh reality faced by stock market beginners For novice investors who only recently entered the domestic stock market after being swept up in the bull-market mood, the recent KOSPI volatility has been difficult to handle. With the market changing direction several times a day and daily losses sometimes exceeding 5%, even veteran investors are complaining of fatigue.
In fact, recent volatility in the domestic market has been extraordinary.Last month, the KOSPI fell only 67 points from the end of May on a monthly basis, but the intraday picture was very different.Circuit breaker mechanisms were triggered three times, sidecars nine times, and daily returns swung by as much as 8% in a single day.
71 points, in one day.Moreover, the brokerage industry expects volatility to continue for the time being.Han Ji-young, a researcher at Kiwoom Securities, said, "This month will not be an easy market either," adding, "As the Volatility Index (KOSPI 200 Volatility Index) remains above 90, pressure for further volatility is likely to continue.
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" For retail investors who jumped in late, that is a frightening prospect.
98%. 3/Photo=Yonhap News Agency [Financial News] #.Buying at the top, driven by herd mentality In behavioral economics, the tendency for people to follow trends or the choices of the majority is called the bandwagon effect.
Once investment decisions are based not on a company's fundamentals but on what people around you are doing, investors fall into a cognitive bias that leads them to buy stocks at the very peak of public excitement.
Experts say that investors torn between "cutting losses" and "holding on" need a strategy.Rather than simply enduring in the hope that "it will go up someday," they should wait based on clear corporate earnings and solid reasons.Brokerage analysts say this latest selloff is not a sign of a fundamental collapse in the semiconductor industry.
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The prevailing view is that it is only a short-term psychological shock from the decline in U.
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big tech stocks, and that core fundamentals, such as SK hynix's dominant share of the High Bandwidth Memory market, remain intact.Some also say investor sentiment could recover starting with Samsung Electronics' preliminary earnings, due as early as the 7th, followed by SK hynix's ADR listing, second-quarter earnings, and results from U.S.
M7 companies.
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I don't want to become one of those people who keep saying, "I should have bought, I should have sold, I should have held." Yet today, it still feels like everyone else is doing well in stocks, real estate, and wealth-building strategies without me.The world of investing is hard no matter how much you study, so if you want to receive stories you can relate to with a clap, please subscribe to the reporter profile page.[World of Retail Investors] We also welcome tips from retail investors who have investment stories they would like to share.
98%. 3/Photo=Yonhap News Agency [Financial News] #.bng@fnnews.com Kim Hee-sun Reporter