"Mr. Kim, you bought 20 shares of SK Hynix, right?"... In a market crash, bitter mockery grows as 'FOMO' gives way to 'JOMO' [Useful Issue]

[Financial News] The defining word in the domestic stock market in the first half of this year was undoubtedly "Fear of Missing Out (FOMO)." As the KOSPI hit record highs day after day,individual investors rushed into the market late, worried that they might have to buy even at current levels.That was the term used to describe them.
As the stock market has recently slumped, the word "JoMO" has been spreading rapidly online instead of FOMO.
On the 19th, a post on an online stock community said, "A new term called JoMO, the opposite of FOMO, has even emerged," adding, "I invested in Samsung Electronics, took a loss, and sold, but I think I actually did pretty well."
Attorney Kim Eun-yu of the law firm Kangsan also recently said on social media that "investors caught up in FOMO often keep switching stocks and fail to make large gains, while investors with JoMO trust companies they have studied enough and wait."
Kim, who spent 30 years working as a lawyer specializing in redevelopment and reconstruction cases, began studying stocks and investing only at age 53. He is known to have earned a return of about 2,100% over five years by investing in NVIDIA, Palantir Technologies, and others.
In a phone interview with Financial News on the 20th, he stressed that "stock investing is like a business you will live with for your entire life, so the word FOMO itself should disappear from investment culture." He added, "Just as you write a business plan when starting a business, you should set a plan before investing, from stock selection to buy and sell timing and holding period, so that you are not swayed by FOMO."

FOMO was systematically defined in a 2013 paper by a research team led by Professor Andrew Przybylski at the University of Oxford. The researchers described it as "a persistent fear that others are having rewarding experiences without you."
Since then, FOMO has become a key term in behavioral economics and finance for explaining herd behavior and irrational investment psychology, where investors follow others into trades.
By contrast,JoMO, or Joy of Missing Out, refers tothe pleasure of feeling fine even when you miss out. In consumer behavior studies, it is defined as a psychological state in which people are satisfied with their own choices rather than chasing every opportunity.
A 2022 study on mindfulness published in the Journal of Consumer Affairs found that reducing FOMO and increasing JoMO could improve mental well-being and life satisfaction.
A 2023 study published in Telematics and Informatics Reports by a research team led by Chris Berry, a psychology professor at Washington State University, also found that JoMO was positively associated with lower social comparison and higher life satisfaction.
From an investment perspective, JoMO has come to mean sticking to the principle of long-term investing in companies you understand well, rather than chasing soaring stocks too late.
Kim explained that "good investing is not about grabbing every opportunity, but about giving up unnecessary ones." He added, "The mindset of not envying other people's success and being satisfied with your own investment principles is exactly JoMO."

However, some analysts say the JoMO now used in Korea has drifted away from its original meaning and has instead taken on a mocking tone.
That is because as losses have mounted among investors hit by the market slump, the sentiment that "it was better not to invest at all" has spread.
According to the Korea Exchange, sell-side sidecars were triggered 18 times on the Korea Exchange Main Board since last month, and the circuit breaker mechanism was activated five times. In some semiconductor leveraged products, more than 90% of investors were found to have fallen into loss territory.
On online communities, reactions such as"These days, JoMO is more popular than FOMO," "FOMO means being anxious because you couldn’t buy, while JoMO means being glad you didn’t buy," and "the joy of not holding stocks"have been pouring in.
The term is also being used to mock individual investors who bought at the top, alongside expressions such as "the one who didn’t buy is the winner" and "cash is the best investment."
A financial industry official said, "There have been many cases in which investors who were swept up by FOMO in a rising market and jumped late into semiconductors and leveraged products suffered heavy losses in a sharp downturn." He added, "Whether in a soaring market or a plunging one, what matters in the end is not following others, but sticking to your own investment principles."
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