South Korean retail investors have significantly increased their investment in U.S. stocks, with the total holdings surpassing $101 billion. This marks a 64% increase compared to the previous year, according to data from the Korea Securities Depository.
Among the most preferred stocks is Tesla (TSLA, Financial), with a collective investment reaching $16.7 billion. Other popular stocks include Nvidia (NVDA) at $13.8 billion, Apple (AAPL) at $4.6 billion, and Microsoft (MSFT) at $3.6 billion.
The trend towards U.S. stocks comes as the S&P 500 Index has risen by 26.41% this year, while the domestic Kospi Index has declined by 5.17%, making it one of the worst-performing indices globally.
Korean retail investors have been net sellers of Kospi stocks, offloading $3.2 billion worth this year. Meanwhile, they have increased their investments in volatile assets like cryptocurrencies and technology stocks, which have become their preferred choices.
Apart from direct stock purchases, these investors have shown keen interest in leveraged exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that track U.S. tech stocks, with some ETFs seeing a high demand. Notable ETFs in their portfolios include those that offer triple daily leverage on the Nasdaq 100 and U.S. semiconductor stocks.
