{"id":70251,"date":"2026-07-01T00:32:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T00:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/70251\/"},"modified":"2026-07-01T00:32:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T00:32:11","slug":"semiconductor-leveraged-etfs-top-first-half-returns-inverse-funds-trail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/70251\/","title":{"rendered":"Semiconductor, Leveraged ETFs Top First-Half Returns; Inverse Funds Trail"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img alt=\"Hana Bank head office dealing room in Jung-gu, Seoul, on June 25. Reporter Cho Tae-hyung - Seoul Economic Daily Finance News from South Korea\" title=\"Semiconductor, Leveraged ETFs Top First-Half Returns; Inverse Funds Trail\" fetchpriority=\"high\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"w-full h-auto rounded-sm\" style=\"color:transparent;object-fit:contain;object-position:center\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/news-p.v1.20260625.e2469dfda8a24d41b722bdf8f9586f7e_P1.jpg\"\/>Hana Bank head office dealing room in Jung-gu, Seoul, on June 25. Reporter Cho Tae-hyung<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-[var(--color-text)] leading-relaxed\">Semiconductor-related leveraged products topped exchange-traded fund (ETF) returns in the first half of this year, data showed. Meanwhile, &#8220;double-inverse&#8221; products that bet on falling share prices recorded the lowest returns.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-[var(--color-text)] leading-relaxed\">According to the Korea Exchange (KRX) on Tuesday, the top 12 ETFs by return from Jan. 2 to June 30 were all leveraged products. Leveraged products track twice the daily return of an underlying index. Semiconductor leveraged ETFs took the top three spots with the highest returns. As Korea&#8217;s stock market rose this year led by large-cap semiconductor stocks, semiconductor leveraged products posted strong gains.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-[var(--color-text)] leading-relaxed\">The top performer was &#8220;TIGER 200IT Leverage,&#8221; which gained 764.07% over the period. The ETF holds semiconductor-related stocks including SK hynix, Samsung Electronics, SK Square and Samsung Electro-Mechanics. Second and third places went to &#8220;KODEX Semiconductor Leverage&#8221; (up 493.80%) and &#8220;TIGER Semiconductor TOP10 Leverage&#8221; (361.23%). Index-tracking leveraged ETFs also posted high gains, including HANARO 200 Futures Leverage (331.93%), TIGER Leverage (328.40%), PLUS 200 Futures Leverage (327.82%) and RISE 200 Futures Leverage (327.05%).<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-[var(--color-text)] leading-relaxed\">ETFs investing in domestic stocks outperformed products focused on overseas stocks. The top 13 ETFs by first-half returns were all products investing in domestic stocks. The KOSPI&#8217;s gain since the start of the year was 99.20%, the highest among major global indices. The U.S. Philadelphia Semiconductor Index followed at 93.55%, while Taiwan ranked third at 59.25%. The KOSPI&#8217;s gain far exceeded that of fourth-ranked Japan (39.18%). Among overseas equity ETFs, the highest-returning product was &#8220;TIGER U.S. Philadelphia Semiconductor Leverage&#8221; (281.08%).<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-[var(--color-text)] leading-relaxed\">The lowest-returning products were double-inverse funds, which can generate twice the return when share prices fall. KIWOOM 200 Futures Inverse 2X (-89.26%), PLUS 200 Futures Inverse 2X (-88.96%), TIGER 200 Futures Inverse 2X (-88.94%), KODEX 200 Futures Inverse 2X (-88.78%) and RISE 200 Futures Inverse 2X (-88.55%) ranked as the five worst performers. All of these products bet two-to-one on a decline in the KOSPI 200 Futures Index.<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"null - Seoul Economic Daily Finance News from South Korea\" title=\"Semiconductor, Leveraged ETFs Top First-Half Returns; Inverse Funds Trail\" fetchpriority=\"high\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"w-full h-auto rounded-sm\" style=\"color:transparent;object-fit:contain;object-position:center\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/news-p.v1.20260630.6761c4de0ae64e0b872115b65d5847e0_P1.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hana Bank head office dealing room in Jung-gu, Seoul, on June 25. Reporter Cho Tae-hyung Semiconductor-related leveraged products&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70252,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2449,38409,337,5422,7586,739,112,16718],"class_list":["post-70251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-seoul","tag-double-inverse-etf","tag-first-half-etf-performance","tag-korea-exchange","tag-kospi-returns","tag-leveraged-etf","tag-semiconductor-etf","tag-seoul","tag-tiger-200it-leverage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}