Lose Money in Foreign Bond and Derivatives Markets
The Financial Supervisory Service announced on Oct. 27 that individual investors’ foreign stock investment totaled 28.9 trillion won and the gains from the investment added up to 3.4 trillion won at the end of August this year, the investment increased 142.6 percent in eight months, and their investment losses in foreign bond and derivatives markets were approximately 3.7 trillion won that day.
The gains were approximately 100 billion won at the end of 2018 and 700 billion won at the end of last year. The figure jumped to 1.4 trillion won in June and 3.4 trillion won in August this year. For the first eight months of this year, individual investors’ net foreign stock purchase totaled US$11.5 billion, up 596 percent from a year earlier. Their top picks were Tesla (US$1.55 billion), Apple (US$970 million), Microsoft (US$610 million), Google (US$420 million) and Hasbro (US$410 million).
Meanwhile, their foreign bond investment was 9.3 trillion won at the end of August, down 27.5 percent from a year ago. The losses from the investment increased from 800 billion won or so to 2.7 trillion won from the end of last year to August this year.
Their investment in Brazilian government bonds accounted for no less than 84 percent of the bond investment. “The investment dropped 28 percent in eight months with emerging and oil-producing countries affected by COVID-19 and plunging oil prices and the value of the Brazilian Real dropping,” the Financial Supervisory Service explained.
When it comes to high-risk derivatives, individual investors’ losses from foreign exchange-traded derivatives and foreign exchange margin trading were 878.8 billion won and 120.8 billion won in the first half of this year, respectively.