[Anchor]
Individual investors have fallen into a state of panic following the record-breaking plunge. With many having heavily invested in semiconductor stocks in particular, the shock was immense.
Reporter Hong Yeongjae has more.
[Reporter]
Individual investors could not take their eyes off the stock tickers, which were dyed entirely in blue all day.
[Lee Chung-yeon / Yangcheon-gu, Seoul: I woke up in the morning right around 8:58, and Samsung Electronics was already down by about 8-point-something percent. So I just thought a correction period was coming. But suddenly, SK Hynix plunged into minus 10%. I was really shocked.]
As Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, the two leading semiconductor giants of the domestic stock market, plummeted, investors with a high proportion of their portfolios in these two stocks suffered an even greater blow.
Today (July 28), Samsung Electronics recorded its steepest daily decline in about 17 years since the 2008 financial crisis, plunging 41% compared to its peak last month.
SK Hynix, which had been nearing the 3 million won mark, dropped by 48%, effectively being cut in half.
[Individual Investor A: I put 100% of my funds into semiconductors. I put in all my spare cash plus even took out loans, almost throwing everything in. That was because I had that much confidence in AI. When it drops this severely, it really drains all your strength.]
Online communities were flooded with reactions from people saying they could not focus on their work, or begging to be spared, pleading that they would never touch stocks again and would only use savings and installment deposits.
[Individual Investor B: It surged so much during the first half of the year that I figured something like this was bound to happen eventually, so honestly, I've already resigned myself to despair since before.]
As stock prices plunged, the Kospi 200 Volatility Index, known as the Korean fear index, surged by more than 7% compared to yesterday, surpassing the 80 mark for the first time in 7 trading days.
[Park Sang-hyun / Research Fellow at iM Securities: We have to view investor sentiment itself as quite unfavorable. Given that volatility has been exceptionally large all along, individual investors naturally have no choice but to feel considerable fatigue.]
While the fear of missing out, or FOMO, was dominant when the stock market surged in the first half of the year, the term "JOMO" (joy of missing out) is now spreading, with people saying they actually feel relieved not holding stocks amid the recent plunge.
(Photo courtesy of Yonhap News)
(Reported by Hong Yeongjae | Video by Choi Dae-woong | Video Editing by Shin Se-eun | Design by Han Heung-soo)
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