[Anchor]
Today (November 6), major South Korean companies spanning semiconductors, batteries, automobiles, and shipbuilding were all dyed in blue. In this chart, the larger the rectangle, the greater the market capitalization. As you can see, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix account for roughly half, holding a massive weight that left investors in shock today. "Seohak ants," retail investors who put their money into the U.S. market, also watched at least 13 trillion won evaporate in a single day, leaving them utterly devastated.
Reporter Kim Gi-tae has the details.
[Reporter]
Today in broad daylight in Yeouido, Seoul, open spaces outside office buildings are packed with office workers out for a cigarette.
With trading screens flashing entirely in blue, they simply cannot focus on work.
[Individual Investor A: It's really bad. It's cut in half entirely. More than halved, actually. Well, I try not to look at it anymore. My blood pressure goes up every time I look.]
Retail investors who engaged in bottom-fishing hoping for a rebound can only sigh, saying, "I don't even have cash left to average down anymore."
[Individual Investor B: When things go up, they talk endlessly. Why don't they say anything when it drops? Analysts are the same way. It just plants distrust in the market. Right now... I seriously thought North Korea had invaded.]
With nowhere to vent their frustration, retail investors gathered in an online temple.
They bow and float lanterns bearing wishes for upper-limit price surges, comforting one another in their shared plight.
In particular, as Wall Street suffered a sharp plunge, individual investors pouring money into the U.S. market—so-called Seohak ants—are estimated to have suffered massive losses.
Tesla, in which domestic investors hold 30 trillion won, dropped more than 10%, and Nvidia, holding 22 trillion won worth of shares, saw an amount equivalent to the entire market cap of Coca-Cola evaporate in a single day.
The so-called "SOXL," a leveraged product that triples the daily price fluctuations of semiconductor stocks and where roughly three out of ten investors are known to be South Korean, plummeted by nearly 40% overnight.
It is estimated that Seohak ants lost more than 13 trillion won in just a single day.
[Kim Doo-eon (Vincent), Senior Research Fellow at Hana Securities: I think we shouldn't get too swept up in emotions. Buying slowly and selling slowly... meaning rather than focusing on rapidly fluctuating prices, we should focus on value fundamentals.]
As roller-coaster market conditions are expected to persist for a while, investors' anxiety and sighs run deeper.
(Video Editor: Kim Yoon-sung, VJ: Lee Ji-hwan)
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