Sudden Plunge on a Single Share Trade Sparks Fury: "What Happened to My 80 Billion Won?"

A forced liquidation amounting to 80 billion won occurred in overseas derivative markets after a single share of SK Hynix was traded at the lower limit price on a domestic alternative trading system, it has been confirmed.

While the stock immediately recovered its normal price domestically, overseas trading platforms reflected the price as it was, causing losses to snowball.

On the 28th, right after the pre-market opening of the alternative trading system Nextrade, a single share of SK Hynix was executed at 1.272 million won, which was 30% lower than the previous day's closing price.

Buying pressure soon flowed in, and the stock price immediately returned to normal levels.

However, the problem arose on overseas decentralized stock derivative platforms operating 24 hours a day.

Instead of directly fetching domestic stock market quotes, these platforms calculate reference prices through a price feed system called an "oracle."

As the lower limit price executed on Nextrade at the time was transmitted as-is through the oracle, the overseas platforms perceived the price of SK Hynix to have plummeted by about 18%.

Consequently, the losses of accounts invested in the stock's rise surged all at once, and accounts exceeding a certain level of loss were automatically liquidated, forcefully closing investment contracts worth approximately 57.4 million dollars, or about 80 billion won in Korean currency.

This incident clearly demonstrated that temporary abnormal trading in the domestic market can be immediately transmitted to overseas derivative markets.

In particular, Nextrade's pre-market has low trading volume right after opening, leading to criticisms that even a single share trade like this can be recognized as the market price and impact overseas markets.

Experts pointed out that improving spot market systems alone has limitations, suggesting that price verification systems for oracles transmitting price information must be strengthened, such as setting minimum trading volume criteria, reflecting prices from multiple exchanges, or applying moving average prices over a certain period.

Nextrade plans to introduce a static volatility interruption (VI) system starting in September, which will switch to single-price trading when stock prices fluctuate sharply.

(Reported by Kim Minjeong | Video by Lee Eui-sun | Design by Lee Su-min | Produced by SBS Digital News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.