“Do I Have 43 Billion Won in My Account?” ... Kim Soo-yong Clears Up Misconception That He’s a “Stock Market Guru”

[Financial News] TV personality Kim Soo-yong explained his stock-trading records totaling 43 billion won.
On the 22nd, a video titled “I’m Revealing All My Stock-Trading Know-How” was posted on the YouTube channel “Yukgam Kim Soo-yong.”
Kim Soo-yong began, “I’ve been getting a lot of messages about stocks. People call me a ‘stock market guru’ and ask how I’m so good at it. I was surprised, too. Just from the headlines, people think I’m managing around 43 billion won.”
When the production team asked whether he actually had 43 billion won, Kim Soo-yong joked, “You’re asking if I have 43 billion won? I wish I did.”
He continued, “It’s true that my total buys and sells amount to 43 billion won. If you buy and sell 400 times with 100 million won, that adds up to 40 billion won. If you buy and sell 4,000 times with 10 million won, that’s 40 billion won, too. It doesn’t mean I have 40 billion won in assets,” he explained.
Kim Soo-yong said he first started investing in stocks in 1999. “I saw an article saying that actor Park Joong-hoon had invested 50 million won in a friend’s company and made ten times that amount, and I thought I should invest in stocks, too. I lived in Yeouido, where there were lots of securities firms, so I took 20 million won, opened an account, and bought that stock,” he recalled.
But he took a big loss from his very first investment. Kim Soo-yong confessed, “It started falling as soon as I bought it, and half of it was gone within a month. I thought I’d use the 10 million won I had left to buy something else, so I bought stock related to the Genome Project, but it fell unbelievably. I completely lost my reason then.”
He said he ultimately lost 18 million won within a year. “I had 2 million won left, and I quit stocks, thinking, ‘If I ever invest in stocks again, I’m a dog.’”
Then, in 2007, he plunged back into stock investing. Kim Soo-yong recalled, “Stocks seemed to be doing well again, so I bought some with the 30 million won I’d saved, but they started plunging like crazy as soon as I bought them.”
He continued, “I shared my concerns about stocks with Kim Yong-man and Ji Seok-jin and asked them to recommend something good, but they gave me bad tips. I asked them because I was desperate to grab onto even a straw, and the stock was delisted, so I lost almost 50 million won.”
Kim Soo-yong began investing in earnest in 2011, when he became an MC on a securities news program. “There are so many experts, you know. After the show, I learned how to read stock charts and evaluate companies, and things started to make sense. From then on, I made my own decisions instead of asking other people, and I earned around 10 million to 20 million won,” he said.
He continued, “Stocks plunged during COVID-19. I thought that was the time to buy, so I started investing, and I’ve now recovered all my past losses and am slightly in the black.”
He stressed, “The idea that I made hundreds of millions of won and am a ‘stock market guru,’ as the articles suggest, is exaggerated. What I mean is that my stock performance from 1999 to 2026 is at least positive, even though I haven’t made a substantial profit.”
Kim Soo-yong previously drew attention when he revealed his stock account in a video related to the Netflix variety show “Retail Investor Kim Won-hoon: The World of Stocks,” released in September.
At the time, his account showed total purchases of 21.1 billion won and total sales of 23.9 billion won over about six years, from July 2020 to July 2026. After seeing this, Kim Won-hoon reacted with surprise: “You’ve sold at least 20 billion won worth. That’s no joke. You’re a stock expert.”
Last December, on the YouTube channel “Jodongari,” Kim Soo-yong responded to reports that he had made a lot of money investing in stocks, explaining, “I just sold off the stocks I’d lost money on as soon as they turned profitable,” and clarifying that he had not made a huge profit.
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