"If You Stand Still, You're Treated Like a Fool"... Individual Investors Flock to U.S. Stocks, Net Purchases Surge 300 Times Over Last Year

Record-Breaking Investments During Chuseok Holiday
Heavy Buying of AI, Tesla, and Bitcoin Stocks

During this year's Chuseok golden holiday, domestic investors poured as much as 1.8 trillion won into the U.S. stock market. This figure represents a surge of more than 300 times compared to the same period last year, highlighting the unprecedented enthusiasm of Korean individual investors-often referred to as "Seohak Ants"-for U.S. technology stocks.

During this year's Chuseok golden holiday, domestic investors poured an estimated 1.8 trillion won into the U.S. stock market. Photo by Getty Images

According to the securities information portal SEIBro, operated by the Korea Securities Depository, the net purchase amount of U.S. stocks by domestic investors from October 3 to 9, which coincided with the Chuseok holiday, totaled approximately 1.242 billion dollars, or about 1.76 trillion won. This amount is more than 303 times higher than the net purchase of 4.1 million dollars recorded during last year's Chuseok holiday (September 14-18, 2023).

Even considering that this year's holiday period was longer than last year's, the investment fervor of "Seohak Ants" toward the U.S. stock market approached an overheated level. Experts analyze that the simultaneous closure of the Korean stock market and a series of positive developments related to artificial intelligence (AI) in the U.S. stimulated individual investors' buying sentiment.

In fact, the U.S. stock market performed strongly during the Korean holiday period. Investor sentiment was especially buoyed after Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, mentioned that "computing demand has surged rapidly in recent months," fueling optimism across the AI sector. As a result, Nvidia's stock price soared by more than 2 percent, while the S&P 500 Index and the Nasdaq Composite Index rose by 0.58 percent and 1.12 percent, respectively, both reaching new all-time highs.

The most purchased stock was the "Direxion Daily Tesla Bull 2X" ETF, which tracks Tesla's share price at twice the rate. Domestic investors invested as much as 151 million dollars in this product alone. This was followed by Iris Energy, a Bitcoin mining company (105 million dollars), Meta Platforms (100 million dollars), Tesla (96 million dollars), and an ETF that tracks Bitmain's share price at twice the rate (95 million dollars).