"Annual Salary About to Vanish" and "Want to Cry"... Retail Investors Plunge into Panic

Retail investors have fallen into a state of panic as the KOSPI plummeted below the 5,000 threshold immediately upon market open.

In particular, with Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, the two pillars of the domestic stock market, posting drops of around 10%, complaints are pouring in that it is difficult even to hold on.

Today (the 6th), the KOSPI plunged more than 8%, breaking the 5,000-point line just about three minutes after the market opened, triggering a circuit breaker.

After the circuit breaker was lifted, a temporary halt on program sell quotes was successively triggered.

As of 9:53 a.m., the KOSPI was down 7.74% at 4,967.05.

Samsung Electronics is trading down 8.54% at 184,300 won, and SK Hynix is down 10.52% at 1,131,000 won.

Retail investors holding Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are beyond bewildered and left in utter dismay as the plunge continues for a second consecutive day following yesterday.

According to Koscom CHECK, over the past month (October 6 to November 5), individual investors net-bought 5.8323 trillion won of Samsung Electronics and 3.3601 trillion won of SK Hynix.

These are the first and second largest amounts among domestic listed stocks, including exchange-traded funds.

Even yesterday, when the KOSPI dropped 5.28%, individuals net-bought 1.2277 trillion won of Samsung Electronics and 890.2 billion won of SK Hynix.

Yesterday, Samsung Electronics closed regular trading down 7.57% at 201,500 won, while SK Hynix finished down 9.46% at 1,264,000 won.

Online securities communities have turned into venues for retail investors to vent their grievances.

An investor holding Samsung Electronics expressed dismay, saying, "I wonder if a project to turn the entire population into paupers has begun."

Another investor pleaded, "I'm not even hoping for my average purchase price. I just hope it defends the 200,000 won line."

An SK Hynix investor laughed hollowly, saying, "I thought yesterday was the bottom. Just in case, I set a sell order at a 3% drop, and it was executed immediately."

Opinions also emerged that after listening to experts and trying to hold on, their annual salaries are about to vanish, or that they want to cry in the military as two months' worth of wages have disappeared, alongside views that the 1.1 million won line must genuinely be defended.

Some investors exploded in anger, mentioning that Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix pay massive performance bonuses to their employees while only retail shareholders suffer losses.

The plunge in the domestic stock market stems from growing concerns that regulations on the artificial intelligence industry could be tightened after the Democratic Party won a landslide victory in the U.S. midterm elections.

On the 5th, local time, Wall Street stock markets saw the Nasdaq Composite and S&P 500 indexes record their largest drops since April of last year, when markets were shocked by U.S. President Donald Trump's announcement of reciprocal tariffs.

The Nasdaq Composite closed down 1,421.52 points at 24,315.00, and the S&P 500 dropped 334.89 points to finish at 7,353.73.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended the session down 1,833.06 points at 51,523.06.

While experts view the drop as excessive, they advised that investment scopes will likely broaden for the time being toward sectors relatively less affected by uncertainties originating from the U.S. blue wave.

Han Ji-young, a researcher at Kiwium Securities, analyzed, "The domestic market is currently in a phase where traditional fundamental logic, such as earnings and valuations, is not being reflected in stock prices," adding, "Fund flows could diversify into sectors where shareholder return momentum remains valid, such as banks and holding companies; construction and transportation, where net-buying by foreigners is sustained; and biotechnology, benefiting from eased interest rate burdens."

(Photo: Yonhap News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.