I thought putting money into ETFs would be the simple way out

Watching the account balance dip in real-time

I remember staring at my screen last Tuesday, watching my brokerage account refresh every few minutes. It started as a small dip, just a few percent, but it felt like watching sand slip through my fingers. I had put a decent amount into a few leveraged ETFs thinking I could catch the volatility of the semiconductor sector. It was supposed to be a smart play, or at least that’s what I told myself when I clicked the buy button. Watching the prices of Samsung and SK Hynix bounce around like a heartbeat monitor in an action movie wasn’t exactly the peaceful retirement planning I had envisioned. I felt that familiar tightness in my chest that comes when you realize the ‘smart’ move you made is actually just you being stubborn about a market trend that doesn’t care about your portfolio.

The reality of high-frequency swings

There is this weird disconnect when you’re trading from your desk. You’re just looking at numbers and charts, like KODEX US AI Power Infrastructure or some QQQ-related products, but the reality is that the underlying market is getting hammered by things like mid-east tensions or just random jitters about chip cycles. I read somewhere that the Bank of Korea actually warned about these single-stock leveraged ETFs causing market distortions. At the time, I thought it sounded like something for other people to worry about. Now, sitting on a paper loss that I’m trying not to think about too hard, I realize maybe they were right. It’s funny how you ignore warnings until the math stops being in your favor. I wasn’t trying to ‘beat the market,’ I just wanted to keep up with it, but the leverage creates this weird intensity where you feel every single tick of the ticker.

Trying to find comfort in monthly dividends

I’ve started looking into covered-call ETFs lately, mostly because the idea of just getting a steady distribution payment every month sounds way more attractive than the heart-racing swings of my current setup. I saw one that reported a 40.9% return since April, and honestly, the math looks good on paper. People are pouring money into these things—something like 500 billion won in cumulative net purchases. I wonder if I should have just parked my money there instead of chasing the growth stuff. It’s a classic case of wanting to have my cake and eat it too: I want the high growth of the tech sector but the safety of a bond-like structure. It’s probably a fantasy. Every time I look at my transaction history, I see the fees eating away at the edges, and I realize that the bank or the broker is the only one definitely winning here.

Is twenty years really enough time to fix this

I had a conversation with a friend recently about setting aside 500,000 won every month for the next two decades. We were looking at different US funds and index ETFs, trying to calculate what that would look like if we just held steady. It’s supposed to be the sensible way, right? But even then, I keep questioning if I have the patience to just ‘set it and forget it.’ Every time there’s a headline about a major company getting listed or a sector getting disrupted, I get this itch to move money around. I bought some US space-sector ETFs at one point, and then watched for a month as other investors dumped 500 billion won worth of them. It felt like I was holding a bag of hot potatoes. I still have them, by the way. I’m not sure if it’s a long-term hold or just me being too lazy to admit I made a mistake.

The uncertainty of the next cycle

I’m currently holding a mix of things that don’t really talk to each other. Some are core index trackers, some are these volatile leveraged things, and some are just bets on sectors I thought were ‘the future.’ It’s not a clean portfolio. It feels more like a collection of souvenirs from different moods I’ve had over the last two years. Sometimes I think about selling it all and just moving into something boring, like a treasury bond ETF, just to stop the bleeding. But then I check the app again, see a tiny green percentage, and think maybe it’ll turn around tomorrow. It’s a cycle of mild frustration. I don’t feel like I’ve mastered this at all. I’m just trying to make sure I don’t look back in ten years and regret not doing anything, even if what I’m doing now is a bit of a mess.