No. of Recommendations: 10
The KOSPI index traded at 9350 on the 19th June 2026.
A month later, it traded at 6430 on the 20th July 2026.
That's a drop of 31% in 1 month.
This has caused some interesting consequences.
According to Goldman Sachs (Ioannis Blekos): around 13th July, even before the full drop had happened, there was a single day where 3.4% of the adult population of Korea received a margin call.
'your positions will be closed at loss if you do not add new money to your account'
That's about 1 in 10 of all retail investment accounts there.
About two thirds of customers managed to make the margin call and keep their account/positions open, but over 350,000 investment accounts were fully liquidated that day*, and the market continued to drop.
morningstar.com - Bad week for the ants as ripple effects of korean crash spread out across asiaPersonally I associate high volatility in individual stocks globally, and sudden 30% regional drops, with bear markets, but you wouldn't know it from looking at the US market lately.
TRS
* I've also heard estimates of over 400k, can't recall source
