A view of the securities district in Yeouido, Seoul. Yonhap News
Korean retail investors buying U.S. stocks — known locally as “seohak ants” — shifted their buying patterns within a month. In July, their net purchases concentrated on a triple-leveraged semiconductor exchange-traded fund and the U.S.-listed depositary receipt of SK hynix (000660.KS). This month, their buying widened to individual technology stocks including Amazon and Alphabet, as well as artificial intelligence infrastructure names.
Amazon led net buying by settlement value at $193.61 million during the first 13 days of the month, according to Seibro, the securities information portal run by the Korea Securities Depository, on the 15th. SpaceX ranked second at $175.92 million and Alphabet third at $136.30 million. Bloom Energy came in fifth at $114.87 million and Tesla sixth at $109.14 million. Six of the top 10 were individual stocks.
The change is stark compared with the previous month. At that time, SOXL — an ETF that tracks three times the daily return of the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index — was the runaway leader with $3.58 billion in net buying. The SK hynix ADR ranked second at $843.71 million. Net buying of the two names totaled $4.42 billion, roughly matching the entire net buying settlement value for U.S. stocks in July of $4.64 billion. By contrast, Amazon, Micron and SanDisk did not even make the top 50 in net buying.
This month, the SK hynix ADR fell to 23rd at $53.42 million and SOXL to 24th at $52.57 million. In the opposite direction, SanDisk entered the ranking at ninth with $100.53 million and Micron at 12th with $91.37 million. Funds that had concentrated on Amazon, Micron and SanDisk — which held the top three spots in net buying through the 6th — later spread to SpaceX, Alphabet, Bloom Energy and Tesla.
The rebound is attributed to a sharp recovery in technology stocks after Big Tech’s cloud businesses posted better-than-expected earnings, which revived investor sentiment. On the 30th and 31st of last month, local time, Micron rose 18.36%, SanDisk 25.99% and Amazon 15.32%, all posting double-digit gains, while the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index climbed 8.27% over the two days. In the rebound following a sharp drop, investors realized the gains built up in triple-leveraged products and instead returned to individual stocks with confirmed earnings and AI investment benefits.
Buying targets also broadened across the AI value chain. Following Bloom Energy, which is tied to data center power demand, optical networking company Coherent ranked 11th, chipmaker Marvell Technology 13th, and Vertiv, a maker of data center power and cooling equipment, 16th. Rather than betting on the direction of a specific semiconductor index, investors are dividing their holdings across cloud, memory, and power and communications infrastructure.
Still, the preference for leverage has not disappeared. ProShares Ultra QQQ (QLD), which tracks twice the daily return of the Nasdaq 100 Index, ranked fourth at $126.68 million. An official in the financial investment industry said, “It is not that risk appetite has weakened, but that July’s concentration in triple-leveraged chip products has eased and the criteria for choosing stocks and products have become more granular.”
