South Korea stock market leverage frenzy: ETF scale surges to $45 billion, leverage exposure hits record high

Odaily Planet Daily News reports that The Kobeissi Letter published an analysis indicating that the intensity of leveraged trading in the Korean stock market has continued to get out of control. The AUM (assets under management) of its leveraged ETFs has surged to about $45 billion, setting a new all-time high, and has grown cumulatively by more than 800% since the beginning of 2026.

Meanwhile, the proportion of leveraged exposure to free-float market capitalization has risen to about 2.9%, up more than threefold from the January level, suggesting that tradable shares in the market are being highly leveraged and amplified.

At the individual stock level, the 2x long SK Hynix ETF listed in Hong Kong once grew to roughly $15 billion, becoming the world’s largest single-stock leveraged product.

By contrast, 2x long ETFs tracking popular targets such as Micron, NVIDIA, SanDisk, and Tesla have never exceeded $10 billion historically.

The analysis notes that leverage in the Korean market is already at an extreme level, and the rapid accumulation of risk exposure has raised concerns about potential amplification of market volatility.