Watching the Nasdaq chart at three in the morning

Starting with VTI and the noise of YouTube

I remember when I first decided to look into overseas stocks. It was mostly because of those YouTube videos that kept showing up in my feed—people talking about how they retired early just by putting money into a simple VTI ETF. It sounded so clean, so logical. I opened my brokerage account late one night, sitting at my desk with the lights off, just feeling like I was finally doing something ‘adult.’ I didn’t really have a plan other than wanting to get away from the stagnant feeling I had with local Korean stocks. Everyone was talking about Nasdaq 100 ETFs like they were a cheat code, and I guess I fell for the simplicity of it all. I spent about an hour just clicking through the interface, trying to understand how the currency conversion actually worked before the trade went through.

The reality of checking exchange rates and fees

What hit me first wasn’t the market volatility, but the sheer annoyance of the transaction costs. I had assumed that buying a stock in the US was just like buying one here, but the bank-side foreign exchange processes are weirdly manual for someone who just wants to place a quick order. I remember realizing that after fees and the spread on the exchange rate, I was already down a small percentage before the stock even moved. I paid roughly 30,000 KRW in various commissions just for my first few transactions, which felt trivial at the time but started to add up when I saw the deductions on my statement. It wasn’t the grand, smooth experience the finance influencers portrayed.

Why I gave up on trying to be a smart trader

For a few weeks, I tried to keep track of the Nasdaq moves and even poked around at bond ETFs to hedge against the drops. It was exhausting. I’d wake up, check my phone, and see that my portfolio had shifted by a few percent overnight. Sometimes it was up, but that lingering feeling of ‘did I miss an exit point?’ started to mess with my sleep. I read about people doing arbitrage between ADRs and local shares, and honestly, the paperwork involved with foreign exchange declarations makes that kind of stuff look like a full-time job. I don’t know how anyone manages that while working a 9-to-5. I just stopped looking at the charts after a while because it felt like I was losing more in mental energy than I was making in gains.

The confusion around global market shifts

I still keep an eye on news about the NYSE experimenting with 24-hour trading or the talk about Korean companies listing abroad, but it just feels like background noise now. It’s funny—I thought the goal was to find the ‘next big thing’ or the perfect balance of technology and growth, but now I’m just left with a pile of ETFs I rarely touch. There’s this persistent uncertainty about whether I’m actually making a sound choice or just betting on the US market because it’s the default setting for everyone else. Sometimes I look at my account and think about moving it all back to a simple, low-interest savings account just so I don’t have to think about ‘price discovery’ or ‘foreign exchange risk’ ever again.

Living with the unresolved portfolio

It’s been a year, and I still have those same stocks sitting there. I haven’t sold, but I haven’t bought more either. Every time I get a notification about a dividend or a minor tax adjustment, it just reminds me how disconnected I am from the ‘investment strategy’ I thought I was building. It’s not that I’m losing money, necessarily, but the expected thrill of participating in the global market never really happened. It just became another chore. I still wonder if I should have just stuck with what I knew, or if I’m just waiting for a market crash to force my hand. It’s an uncomfortable middle ground, but for now, I’m just leaving it alone.