Expecting a rebound, retail investors buy Samsung Electronics and SK hynix leveraged ETFs again

[Financial News] Individual investors are buying single-stock leveraged exchange-traded funds (ETFs) tied to Samsung Electronics and SK hynix again. After regulations on these products were tightened in July, they remained net sellers in August and September, but have turned to net buying this month.
Several leveraged products, particularly single-stock leveraged ETFs tied to SK hynix, ranked among the ETFs most heavily bought net by individual investors this month.
According to the Korea Exchange and KOSCOM CHECK on the 25th, individual investors net bought a total of 315.4 billion won in 14 single-stock leveraged ETFs tied to SK hynix and Samsung Electronics between the 1st and 23rd of this month.
Of these, net purchases of the seven products tied to SK hynix totaled 226.3 billion won, more than the 89.1 billion won for the seven products tied to Samsung Electronics.
In July, individual investors net bought 2.7728 trillion won in the 14 single-stock leveraged ETFs. However, after related regulations were tightened starting on the 31st of that month, including an increase in the required investment deposit, selling outweighed buying.

Among individual ETFs, KODEX SK hynix Single-Stock Leverage had the largest net purchases by individual investors, at 152.9 billion won. This was the 11th-largest amount among all ETFs listed in South Korea.
Individual investors’ buying also focused on leveraged ETFs beyond single-stock products. They net bought 1.0448 trillion won of KODEX Leverage ETF and 256.4 billion won of Samsung KODEX Semiconductor Leverage ETF.
The recent sharp decline in the domestic stock market appears to have prompted investors expecting a rebound in share prices to buy leveraged products. The KOSPI fell 18.83% between the 1st and 23rd of this month.
Foreign investors, by contrast, bought both leveraged ETFs that bet on index gains and inverse ETFs that bet on declines.
Foreign investors net bought 148.3 billion won of KODEX Leverage ETF this month. That was the second-largest amount among their net ETF purchases, after Samsung KODEX 200 ETF.
They also invested in so-called “2x inverse” products, which track the daily return of the KOSPI 200 index at twice the rate in the opposite direction. Foreign investors net bought 51.3 billion won of KODEX 200 Futures Inverse 2X, the fifth-largest amount among all ETFs.
However, in single-stock leveraged ETFs, foreign investors’ selling outweighed their buying. They were net sellers of those products in July and August, then switched to net buying in September, but this month they again net sold 48.8 billion won.
They net sold 50.8 billion won in the seven products tied to SK hynix, while net buying 2 billion won in the seven products tied to Samsung Electronics.

[email protected] Han Seung-gon Reporter