Over the past month, South Korean leveraged retail traders saw 320k accounts liquidated, with 62% being young people aged 20 to 30; total losses were about 2.15 trillion won.

BlockBeats message: On July 16, according to statistics from South Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service and a comprehensive estimate drawing on a report from Goldman Sachs’ trading desk, South Korea’s individual investors incurred total actual losses from leveraged trading of approximately 21.5 trillion KRW, or about $145 million, over the past month. The losses include principal losses from forced liquidation, net asset value declines in leveraged ETFs, debts formed by additional margin calls, and losses such as option premiums. Only on July 13, in just one day, more than 1.2 million accounts in margin trading by individuals and leveraged product accounts received margin call notices; among them, about 320,000 to 360,000 accounts were forcibly liquidated by securities firms and had their principal fully wiped out. Goldman Sachs’ report pointed out that the forced liquidations on that day were an important component of institutions’ net selling.

In the age distribution of liquidated accounts, people aged 20 to 30 make up as much as 62%, mainly concentrated in semiconductor 2x leveraged ETFs from Samsung Electronics and SK hynix. Meanwhile, South Korea’s Financial Services Commission has already announced that, starting in October 2026, a nationwide unified debt counseling hotline, 1375, will be opened, providing one-stop services such as debt restructuring, personal bankruptcy consultation, and relief for victims of illegal high-interest private lending. The measure has been incorporated into the government’s “Economic Crisis Victim Suicide Prevention Measures” report submitted to the National Assembly, intended to prevent debt problems triggered by leveraged liquidations from evolving into a social crisis.

Today, South Korea’s Financial Services Commission once again tightened regulation, announcing regulatory measures targeting single-stock leveraged ETFs and raising the minimum margin requirement for chip leveraged ETFs. The minimum margin is increased from 10 million KRW to 30 million KRW; only cash is recognized as margin. For each single-stock leveraged trade, the maximum number of shares allowed per order is limited to 20 shares, previously 1 share. South Korea will also ban the listing of new single-stock leveraged products.