The Migration to the US Market and the QQQ Trap I have seen a lot of people in my circle recently pivot from the domestic KOSPI index to US-listed ETFs like QQQ. It feels like an inevitable reaction to the stagnation we see locally. When I first considered moving a chunk of my portfolio to…
Getting stuck in the math of my TMF holding I really thought I understood the math when I first started buying TMF. It felt straightforward enough—a triple-leveraged bet on 20-year US Treasuries. I bought in at 54 dollars, dropping about 9 million won, thinking that if rates just budged in my favor, the math would…
When the exchange rate becomes the main hobby I started buying US stocks about two years ago, back when everyone was talking about Vanguard ETFs and how stable they were compared to holding cash in a savings account. At the time, I thought I was being really calculated. I’d watch the dollar exchange rate like…
Getting lost in the sea of ticker symbols I remember when I first opened my brokerage account, thinking it would be simple. Everyone kept talking about SPY and VOO like they were holy grails of passive investing. I spent hours reading about how the Dow Jones index lost almost all its original constituents over fifty…
Getting addicted to the late-night ticker There was a period last year where I just couldn’t put the phone down. I was obsessed with checking the US stock market in real-time, even though I was living in Seoul and the hours were completely backwards. My screen time went up by three hours a day, mostly…
Watching the Space IPO noise from my desk I was sitting in my office in Gwanghwamun yesterday, and a colleague was talking my ear off about the upcoming SpaceX IPO. It’s funny how everyone suddenly becomes an investment expert whenever a big ticker name gets tossed around. He was talking about buying some specialized space-themed…
Understanding the mechanics of YINN and 3x leveraged ETFs Many investors who look into Chinese market exposure often encounter YINN (Direxion Daily FTSE China Bull 3X Shares). It is a leveraged ETF designed to provide three times the daily performance of the FTSE China 50 Index. Because the underlying assets are traded on the Hong…