[Anchor]

Signs of investors leaving the domestic stock market are becoming clear amid extreme fluctuations. On the other hand, investment fever for U.S. stocks has grown even hotter this month.

Reporter Lee Tae-gwon reports on the background of these contrasting investment trends in Money Move.

[Reporter]

This month, market stabilization measures have been triggered almost every day on the Kospi, including two circuit breakers and 12 sidecars.

Amid extreme volatility, the index plummeted 26% from its peak recorded a month ago.

Investor deposit funds in the domestic market, which serve as waiting capital, also decreased by more than 30 trillion won, dropping to the 105 trillion won range. Amid expectations of interest rate hikes, the balance of time deposits at the five major commercial banks increased by 22.3 trillion won this month.

[Chun Young-jae / Seongnam-si, Gyeonggi-do: (The domestic stock market) has too much volatility, making it unpredictable, and the impact of news is so massive that it's too scary to invest.]

The scale of domestic investors' investments in the U.S. stock market is increasing again.

While it was a net-selling dominance in April and May, it turned to net-buying last month, and this month—when the won-U.S. dollar exchange rate began to fall—it surged to four times the scale of last month.

So-called Seohak ants (retail investors investing overseas) mostly bought leverage ETFs tracking 3x the daily return of the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index, which is composed of semiconductor-related companies such as Nvidia and Micron, with SK Hynix ADRs following next.

It is analyzed that as the domestic stock market recently plunged, investors poured into U.S. tech stocks in pursuit of higher returns while anticipating a rebound.

[Shin Seung-jin / Head of Investment Information Team, Samsung Securities: (In the first half of the year,) because the market was strong centered on memory semiconductors, the incentive to invest in overseas U.S. stocks was relatively low. Recently, as domestic stocks show a weak performance, funds disappointed by this seem to be moving overseas....]

The Return to Domestic Market Account (RIA), which lowers capital gains tax rates when selling overseas stocks and investing in domestic stocks, saw its growth momentum stall starting last month when the 100% tax exemption ended, and its balance has recently decreased.

Single-stock leverage ETFs, introduced to prevent the outflow of domestic capital overseas, are creating side effects by amplifying volatility.

Attention is focused on whether the supplementary measures for single-stock leverage ETFs, to be implemented at the end of this month, can reduce volatility and turn investors' steps back.

(Video Editing: Lee So-young, Design: Choi Jae-young)