South Korea's tighter entry rules for single-stock leveraged ETFs and ETNs tied to Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are coinciding with a sharp rebound in margin trading on the underlying shares, pointing to a possible migration of speculative demand into spot-market borrowing. Average daily new margin loan volume through August 14 rose 52.3% for Samsung Electronics to 3,788,924 shares from 2,487,364 in July, while SK Hynix climbed 25.5% to 660,707 shares from 526,625, according to Koscom. At the same time, trading in single-stock leveraged products cooled sharply, with combined daily trading value across 16 products dropping 93.2% from 12.45 trillion won on July 30 to 845.2 billion won on August 7 after regulators imposed a 30 million won cash base margin requirement on new or additional retail purchases from July 31. The additional rules taking effect on August 19 will require at least five hours of simulated trading over a minimum of five trading days and strengthen ETF and ETN premium and discount management. Market participants say the July selloff in the two stocks also improved their low-price appeal, helping revive borrowing demand, but analysts expect fresh inflows into single-stock leveraged ETFs to remain limited as investors rebuild risk appetite and macro headwinds persist.