South Korea will welcome a Stock Leveraged ETF next week, with the first batch tracking Samsung and SK Hynix.

South Korea is set to roll out its first batch of single-stock leveraged ETFs next week (as of May 24th), tied to chipmakers Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, with an aim to deliver twice the daily returns of their underlying stocks. Analysts expect strong demand for these products from South Korea’s more than 14 million retail investors. However, against a backdrop where the KOSPI index has posted intra-day swings of up to 5%, this investor enthusiasm could further amplify market volatility. The CEO of Singapore-based Fibonacci Asset Management stated, “These ETFs will exacerbate existing concentration risk, creating a structural challenge for long-term investors amid persistently high index volatility that makes navigating the Korean market difficult.” Yoon Jaehong, an analyst at Daewoo Future Asset, projects net inflows into the Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix-linked leveraged ETFs (scheduled to launch at the end of May) could reach as high as 5.3 trillion Korean won. He also noted that in the first two months of this year, 300,000 investors completed mandatory online training required before investing in leveraged products—surpassing the total number of such trainees across all of 2025. (Source: Jin10)