South Korea’s stock market saw foreign investors sell off more than 12 trillion won in July, leaving Samsung and SK hynix caught in a “two-sided fate of ice and fire.”

Deep Tide TechFlow news: On July 19, according to Etoday, data from South Korean exchanges shows that between July 1 and July 16, foreign investors cumulatively net sold South Korean stocks totaling about 12.44 trillion KRW. Of that, the net sell-off in the Korea Composite Stock Price Index market (KOSPI) was 12.10 trillion KRW, while the KOSDAQ venture board market saw net selling of 124.4k KRW. Meanwhile, foreign capital, against the trend, net bought South Korean ETFs totaling about 121k KRW. Notably, ETFs that track the Korean KOSPI 200 index and inverse ETFs that bet on market declines both rank among the top in foreign investors’ net purchases, indicating that foreign investors are not uniformly bearish on the market; instead, they are hedging risks and responding to market volatility by allocating both long and short products.

In terms of single-stock leveraged ETFs, foreign investors’ stance toward Samsung Electronics and SK hynix is split, with both companies facing “a tale of two extremes.” From July 1 to July 16, foreign investors cumulatively net bought a single-stock leveraged ETF for Samsung Electronics worth 227 billion KRW, but net sold leveraged ETFs related to SK hynix as much as 1221 billion KRW.