Over 5 Years, Seohak Ants Grow Tenfold in Size... Managing 93 Trillion Won

Overseas Stock Holdings Last Year
$78.01558 Billion
Increased by $30 Billion in One Year

90% Concentrated in U.S. Stocks
Many Tech Stocks Like Tesla and Apple

Techfin Securities Services Launch
Fractional Trading of Overseas Stocks
Investment Barriers Lowered
Trading Could Expand Up to 10 Times This Year

[Asia Economy Reporter Minji Lee] The balance of overseas stock holdings by domestic investors has grown more than tenfold over the past five years. This year, with the full-scale launch of overseas stock trading services by tech-fin securities firms and most securities companies starting fractional overseas stock trading services, the scale of funds flowing overseas is expected to increase further.

According to the Korea Securities Depository's SEIBRO on the 4th, the balance of overseas stock holdings by domestic individual investors over the past year was $78.01558 billion (93.2286 trillion KRW). This is about $30 billion (36 trillion KRW) more than last year ($47.07665 billion, 56.25 trillion KRW). Compared to $6.0726 billion five years ago, it is more than ten times higher.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, funds flowing into overseas companies have grown exponentially. The number of overseas stock settlement transactions (buy + sell) increased by 80% compared to the previous year (5,148,391 transactions), reaching 9,311,820 transactions.

Most of the investments were concentrated in the U.S. stock market. Two years ago, out of the total overseas stock holdings of $14.45305 billion, the U.S. accounted for $8.41565 billion, or 58% of the total. However, currently, nine out of ten overseas stocks held by domestic investors are U.S. stocks, indicating a rapid increase in investment scale. Among the top 50 stocks held, 40 are U.S. stocks.

Interest in Tesla was particularly high. The holding balance was $15.45994 billion (18.4746 trillion KRW), with 20% of U.S. stock investors holding Tesla shares. Following Tesla were Apple ($5.03199 billion), Nvidia ($3.12021 billion), Microsoft ($2.27119 billion), Alphabet ($2.25336 billion), Amazon ($1.85723 billion), Invesco QQQ Trust ETF ($1.38507 billion), ProShares UltraPro QQQ ETF ($1.33199 billion), SPDR S&P 500 ETF ($973.39 million), and Lucid ($919.47 million), in that order.

The number of investors entering overseas stocks this year is expected to increase further. While the domestic stock market showed sluggish performance last year, ranking lowest among the Group of Twenty (G20) countries, the overseas stock investment environment is rapidly improving.

The increase in overseas stock investment channels is also expected to play a role. Toss Securities launched its overseas stock trading service last month. Kakao Pay Securities plans to introduce an MTS (Mobile Trading System) this month that allows investment in both domestic and overseas stocks. About 20 existing securities firms are also successively launching fractional overseas stock trading services, lowering the barriers to overseas stock investment compared to before.

Hwang Sewoon, a research fellow at the Korea Capital Market Institute, said, "The scale of fractional overseas stock trading by the two existing securities firms (Shinhan Financial Investment and Korea Investment & Securities) that provided overseas fractional services from 2018 to last year was about 2 trillion KRW. Considering this, it is estimated that trading will increase by five to nearly ten times, and overseas stock investment funds will also expand accordingly."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.