Trying to pick foreign stocks myself after seeing everyone else’s success was surprisingly complicated

Everyone around me was suddenly talking about overseas stocks. My friends were showing off their gains from US stocks, and even my parents were asking about how to buy shares in foreign companies. It felt like if I didn’t jump in, I’d be left behind. So, I decided to give it a try too. I already had a pretty good grasp on the Korean stock market, so I figured picking a few well-known foreign companies wouldn’t be that hard.

My first thought was to just open an account with my usual brokerage. I figured they’d have options for foreign stocks, and honestly, I didn’t want to deal with opening a whole new account somewhere else. It turned out my existing brokerage did offer overseas trading, but the interface felt a bit clunky. It wasn’t as intuitive as I expected, and finding specific information about foreign companies, like their financial reports in English, took more digging than I anticipated. I remember spending a good hour just trying to figure out how to set up a foreign currency account within the app.

I started by looking at companies I knew. Apple, Google, maybe a big Korean company that also had significant overseas revenue, like Netmarble or KT&G, which I’d seen mentioned in news articles. The news about KT&G’s overseas cigarette business doing well, and Netmarble’s overseas revenue making up a huge chunk of their sales, made me think they were good candidates. I even saw articles talking about SpaceX potentially listing, and how much money was flowing into space-themed stocks. It sounded exciting, but also a bit too speculative for me to start with.

I ended up picking a few tech giants. The idea was to spread the risk, but honestly, I was mostly picking names I recognized. I didn’t really dive deep into their P/E ratios or future growth projections. That was probably my first mistake. I thought, ‘If they’re this big, they must be safe.’ But then I started looking at the fees. Every time I thought about buying or selling, there was a fee, and then there was the currency exchange rate to consider. It felt like small amounts, but when you’re not making massive trades, it adds up. I noticed there were sometimes special events for overseas stock trading fees, but trying to time my trades around those felt like another layer of complexity I wasn’t ready for.

One thing that really threw me off was the timing. The US market closes when the Korean market is waking up. So, if I wanted to react to news that came out overnight, I had to be up early, or wait until the next day. It messed with my daily routine, and I found myself checking stock prices at odd hours. It wasn’t the relaxed investing experience I’d imagined. I’d see a company’s stock plummet overnight and have to decide whether to sell at a loss immediately or hope for a rebound, all while juggling my actual work.

I remember one instance where I saw a slight dip in one of my holdings. I thought, ‘Okay, time to buy more while it’s cheap.’ But then I realized I had to convert more Korean Won to US Dollars, and the exchange rate wasn’t in my favor that particular day. So, the cost of buying more was higher than I initially calculated. It made me wonder if I should have just stuck to domestic stocks where the currency conversion wasn’t an issue, or maybe looked into something like a US stock ETF. I saw some articles mentioning ETFs that track overseas markets, which seemed simpler, but I was already committed to picking individual stocks.

It’s been a few months now, and my portfolio isn’t exactly a disaster, but it’s not the ‘get rich quick’ story I might have subconsciously expected. Some stocks are doing okay, others are just… there. The complexity of managing currency, understanding international market dynamics, and the sheer amount of information available (and sometimes conflicting) has been a lot. I still feel like I’m just scratching the surface, and honestly, the initial excitement has worn off, replaced by a sort of mild, persistent annoyance at how much more there is to learn. I’m not sure if I’ll continue picking individual stocks for long, or if I should just look into something more managed.