Home > Business > Finance

Smaller 'ant' investors increasingly getting stepped on as their bets against Kospi prove wrong

Published: 14 Jan. 2026, 19:13 Updated: 14 Jan. 2026, 19:49

An individual investor posted a picture of their account, saying they bet their entire fortune on the Kospi during the downturn and suffered an 800 million won ($543,000 loss. [SCREEN CAPTURE]

“I’ve lost 800 million won ($543,000).”

An individual investor posted a message with this title on a stock discussion board run by Naver Pay Securities on Jan. 7. Convinced the Kospi would turn lower in the new year, they bought 1.1 billion won worth of Samsung Kodex 200 Futures Inverse 2X exchange-traded funds (ETFs), only to see his losses snowball as the Kospi kept climbing.

The fund is designed to deliver twice the inverse of the Kospi 200 futures index’s daily return. If Kospi 200 futures fall 1 percent in a day, the ETF is structured to rise 2 percent.

“I bought inverse ETFs purely for political reasons without looking at market conditions or the trend,” wrote the investor. “It was my entire fortune, and I’ve lost 800 million won.”

“I won’t blame anyone else — it was my own misguided decision,” they continued. “When I was first down 100 million won, I couldn’t bring myself to cut my losses, so I just held on and the loss ballooned. I’m going to have to live out the rest of my life on the 300 million won I have left.”

Another individual investor posted in the same forum, saying, “I’m leaving after losing everything,” and shared proof that their cumulative loss had reached 350 million won.

As the Kospi has risen every single trading day since the start of the year, more small retail investors — known in Korea as “ant” investors — are betting that the market is at a peak and wagering on a downturn.

A screen in Hana Bank's trading room in central Seoul shows the Kospi opening on Jan. 14. [YONHAP]

According to the Korea Exchange on Wednesday, the two most-traded ETFs that day were Samsung Kodex 200 Futures Inverse 2X and Samsung Kodex Inverse. Both are inverse products that generate profits when the Kospi falls.

Retail investors were net buyers of more than 300.8 billion won of the Kodex 200 Futures Inverse 2X over the nine trading days from Jan. 2 to Wednesday. Over the same period, they poured more than 115.5 billion won into the Kodex Inverse ETF. With the Kospi having jumped more than 75 percent over the past year, investors expecting a correction have bet over 400 billion won on a fall in the index just in the first days of the new year.

Instead, as the Kospi continues to set fresh record highs, those investors are now sitting on hefty losses. The Kospi closed Wednesday at 4,723.10, up 0.65 percent from the previous session and finishing above the 4,700-point mark for the first time on a closing basis, marking nine straight sessions of gains.

By contrast, the Kodex 200 Futures Inverse 2X ended at 478 won, down 1.24 percent on the day — a drop of 27 percent in a month and nearly 80 percent over a year. The Kodex Inverse ETF has also plunged by almost 54 percent over the past year.

Retail investors who rushed to sell in anticipation of an index decline are likewise kicking themselves for getting out too early. Lee, a 30-year-old individual investor who held Samsung Electronics shares, said, “Last year, I thought the rally was over just before it hit the ‘100,000 won Samsung’ milestone, so I sold in the high 90,000-won range. Seeing it now above 140,000 won makes me sick.”

[KOREA EXCHANGE, CHECK EXPERT+]

“If I still had those shares, I don’t think I would sell now, no matter how high it goes,” Lee said.

“With the Kospi having risen 75 percent last year and trading at fairly elevated levels again this year, it’s natural for some investors to feel that the market may have gone up too much,” said Kim Doo-eon, a researcher at Hana Securities. “And because a large portion of the index’s gains has come from Samsung Electronics and SK hynix, there’s also the perception that the rally is being driven by concentrated bets on semiconductors, which can fuel expectations that the rise in share prices might start to stall.”

“Most research departments at securities companies still believe there are many undervalued stocks in the domestic market, and that sectors leading the Kospi’s rally — such as semiconductors and defense — have considerable room to rise further,” said an official at a local securities firm. “Investors need to be careful about making inverse bets simply to lock in short-term gains.”

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
BY JANG SEO-YUN [[email protected]]