Wealthy local investors piled into leveraged ETFs from May 27 to July 10, while foreign investors bought KRW 5.574 trillion of South Korean stocks over July 20 to 23, led by the two chipmakers.
South Korean equity inflows have concentrated in Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix across both domestic high-net-worth investors and foreign buyers. A Seoul Economic Daily analysis of 25,000 investors with more than KRW 1 billion in financial assets found strong net buying in single-stock leveraged ETFs from May 27 to July 10, including KRW 178.1 billion in the KODEX SK Hynix Single Stock Leverage ETF, KRW 140.1 billion in the TIGER SK Hynix Single Stock Leverage ETF, and KRW 116.6 billion in the KODEX Samsung Electronics Single Stock Leverage ETF. Separately, Korea Exchange data showed foreign investors were net buyers of South Korean stocks for four straight trading days from July 20 to 23, with cumulative net purchases of KRW 5.574 trillion, including KRW 2.76 trillion in SK Hynix and KRW 1.73 trillion in Samsung Electronics. Market participants attributed the foreign buying to expectations for higher AI capital spending by Google and other technology groups and to stronger demand prospects for HBM and server DRAM.