Executives from overseas leveraged exchange-traded fund firms are visiting South Korea to assess investor demand and consider new products as Korean investors become important customers for U.S. leveraged instruments. Seven of the 20 overseas stocks with the highest Korean buy-and-sell settlement values over the past six months were leveraged or inverse ETFs, according to Seibro, the Korea Securities Depository’s securities information portal, as of the 22nd of this month. The leading product was Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bull 3X Shares (SOXL), which seeks three times the daily return of a U.S. semiconductor index and recorded $56.4 billion in settlement value, more than six times Micron’s $9.2 billion. SOXL had $5.93 billion in holdings as of the 21st, ahead of ProShares UltraPro QQQ (TQQQ) at $5.04 billion. Tradr ETFs executive Matt Markiewicz said the firm would consider a leveraged ETF based on a Korean company if Samsung Electronics or another Korean company lists shares in the U.S. Tradr’s Korean holdings accounted for about 9% of its approximately $5 billion in total net assets. Tuttle Capital Management Chief Executive Matthew Tuttle said Korean investors represented 25% of assets in T-Rex leveraged ETF products co-managed with REX Financial. REX Financial and BMO Capital Markets officials are scheduled to host a Seoul dinner on the 28th, continuing industry outreach. The firms have offered leveraged and inverse ETNs of up to three times through the MicroSectors brand since 2018.