For those who don't know what's going on in Korea, KOSPI is up 3x in the last year and a large amount of HBM employees have made huge amounts of bonus pay. This has led to an insane FOMO frenzy in a society that's already very competitive.
Add to that, stock gains in Korea are often used to finance housing purchases (or real estate investment) so many retail investors are scared of being "locked out" of housing (which is a requisite status symbol for dating or marriage) if they're not making the same capital gains others are.
Currently Korean social media is full of stories of leveraged day traders who've gotten rich the past year, HBM employees who've made bonuses worth decades of salary (e.g. memes of Samsung employees in luxury cars), etc. Lots of comments along the lines of "everyone is getting rich except me". It's all reminiscent of the crypto frenzy in the US a few years ago but way more intense and concentrated.
I wish we had a word for this, where everyone’s getting rich, there’s a run on stocks, but prices of assets are all going up. Some people are missing out completely whereas a select few hoard wealth in other forms. And of course the government starting to notice and trying to intervene.
> housing (which is a requisite status symbol for dating or marriage
I get that culture is hard to change, but it still seems easier than changing the economics. There are men and women out there who presumably are interested in partnering up; at some point you'd think biology will take over irrespective of which achievements have been unlocked. What's stopping them?
You think status signaling isn't part of biology? That it just happened to independently appear in every human culture and many animals that we are aware of?
Oh, you forget - we lie about social status, including to ourselves. Women and men. And as for what determines status ... first rule of social interaction: you can't ask a woman her age and you can't ask a man his wage (in other words: humans are social animals and this information is only available through playing the social game of deception).
So in practice 80% or so of the population is below "average social status". People who don't absolutely need to pair up (historically women can't earn, but require, money and men can't take care of a home/place to sleep, but have to), will refuse to pair up with someone below their signaled social status. In other words: there are TWO average social statuses. First, there is what people believe their own social status is. Second there is what people, on average, see as others social status.
In a "natural" human society, it's basically impossible for anyone over 25 or so to "pair up", unless they have a partner, which is not common at all. Since social status ALSO determines the distribution of food, at that point the first real period of weakness (you get sick, you hurt your leg, you ...) is the end. You can delay this by forming cliques, but not by that much.
Oh and of course, that has an analog in our society. Look how much a plumber gets paid (ie. it's pretty disappointing), despite the shortage. There are low status and high status jobs, and even where it doesn't make sense they determine pay. E.g. there are a lot of cities with a total glut of lawyers ... it makes no sense to give 7 figure wages for people when 70% of whom can't find work, but we do. By contrast there is an incredible shortage of construction workers, and still they're not paid half what a lawyer gets. Rather we'll get immigrants to do it. Why? Because a great many people would rather signal that they're above manual labor than get 7 figures a year.
In other words: I will live in destitution rather than admit I'm low social status, even if low social status would pay well.
Oh and don't forget credit cards: 80%+ of people worldwide consider feeling rich (and showing off) more important than, ironically, money. Note also the many complaints about the economy, which are never about having or not having money, the big complaint seen everywhere is that people who don't have money "feel poor". One might think it should be perfectly normal to not have money and feel poor.
Which also is the big lesson in investment that's coming up: countries will raise inflation to any level rather than cut expenditures. That's how we got to 20% inflation in the 80s. That's how Argentina or even Zimbabwe got there. Ie: when we're getting close to that point, for the love of God, don't buy government bonds.
Preventing obvious human habits from destroying us seems to me the best reason to really give developing AI your best effort. Because the whole "job destruction" argument has a hole in it you could fit a planet through: people don't want to do the destroyed jobs. What do you think is the best: AI taking jobs? Or, that we force young people into nursing, plumbing, construction, ... through more and more extreme measures and making everyone a lot poorer? That's how the system rebalances after all, make people poorer until the plumbing gets done.
System of education? The current form of it have nudges and blockers everywhere to stop population explosion leading us all into Soylent Green type situation.
They've also driven a noticeable drop in stock prices in the closing minutes that have been used by quant algos to squeeze even more money out of the market as the leverage is a unmanaged algo that was predictable and could be driven up before it had to force trades.
It's not just the gambling of people, but the systematic use of bots to squeeze leveraged vehicles.
Housing usually is needed for living. Not a status symbol for dating. I see how it can help the same way as not starving to death will also help with dating, but the framing is odd.
What are you trying to say, that everyone should own a house? Surely you realize that is not a possibility for many, if not most, young people around the world.
With housing their being so cheap, what the hell is the problem anyway? It's impossible to have expensive real estate in a country that's dying out fast.
Housing is incredibly expensive. Roughly half of Korea lives and works in the Seoul metro area. The average salary is roughly 40,000 USD and the average apartment (maybe 84 square meters) is over 1 million USD.
Government efforts to cool housing inflation have resulted in a 40 percent minimum down payment for a mortgage.
Housing in Seoul and much of Gyeonggi is a pipe dream for most
no it's very possible because in an aging country people relocate to a handful of cities. 50% of South Korea's population now lives in the Seoul metropolitan area. The real estate that's getting cheaper is the one decaying in the countryside.
It's like saying Russia can't have expensive real estate because the country is big, what matters is where people are actually moving.
Cities in Australia consistently rank in the top 5 most expensive real estate indices and we ain't short of space here, it's just not many people are interested in living in a dusty Outback desert.
And for many, if the property is not within 10km of the Sydney or Melbourne city centre, it might as well be in the dusty Outback desert.
I'd think Starlink will help change this. Not for living in the actual dusty Outback (which has its own risks/dangers/inconveniences), but for living in many other places in Australia that are lovely and not too far from desirable areas.
Most people want to live where other people live, for reasons ranging from social connections to access to services and infrastructure. I doubt broadband access access plays even a small role.
Yeah, like I said, not talking about the boonies. There are plenty of lovely places that are >10km from those two cities, but which are still close enough to services and infrastructure.
But indeed Moscow is one of the cheapest cities to buy housing in Europe... On par with poorer East European capitals and second-tier Central European cities.
Huh? According to https://seoulhomes.kr/en/properties/prices/, in Q1 2026, the average apartment in Seoul sells for ~₩1.2B, ~₩45M per 3.3sqm, that's ~840k USD and ~9.6k USD per sqm or ~900 USD per sqft, in what world is that cheap?
Population can age fast while the supply of desirable places to live still doesn't meet demand.
The story we were telling young people that if they apply themselves, go to school and get a job they'll be able to afford family, house, vacations is moving further and further away for more and more people.
The turn towards financial nihilism will continue.
The threshold for greed is higher than the median net worth of an American. We tell people they need "generational" wealth to a make it in this country because housing, education, and healthcare are all so expensive
While "financial nihilism" is part of it, I think we should be putting even more attention towards the forces that are trying to deliberately encourage it for profit.
Kind of like pathological gambling: Sure, some people are susceptible, but there's also an entire industry around finding them and making them succumb.
We live in a capitalist society, not a labor-oriented society. The way to make big money is through capital - ie: purchasing property and then selling it for (hopefully) profit.
Laboring in a capitalist economy is a loser's strategy because your capital is you body's ability to produce value and that has a maximum physical limit. Why participate in an economy using a strategy that has a natural upper bound? It makes no sense. You're not even playing the game poorly - you're not playing the game at all.
This is the logical end conclusion, but in reality, we live in a middle ground where plenty of people have and will live in a society where they can sell their labor for a perfectly content life.
Some time ago it occurred to me that you can't just spend extreme amounts of money. You can only lose it by gambling. In a casino, on investment or on business, it doesn't matter.
Investment or business do also have some gambling factors in it. And both usually cost extreme amounts of money to get started.
However, I found that if the bar of doing business is high enough, "investing" in stock market maybe safer than start a proper business. Because if a business failed, you likely lost a huge amount wealth, including everything you put into the business and maybe more. Whereas if you buy stock responsibly (for example, DCA VOO/&QQQ), there's a high chance you'll eventually bounce back.
Maybe that's one reason the young Koreans invested so much in their stock markets. Their country failed them by restricting them from opportunities, the only way they can save themselves is by gambling.
I recently heard that 80% of small businesses - bodegas, non-chain restaurants and so on - make less money than if they'd just put their starting capital in the stock market.
The problem isn't leveraged funds, it's margin on leveraged funds.
Leveraged funds are the safest way for the average investor to get access to leverage because unlike margin there is no risk of margin calls, and your money generally won't go to zero unlike options which are vastly more complicated and can expire.
The reality is that using leveraged funds (or any leverage) is a completely rational move because the average person will never retire wealthy unless they're already making a tech salary or similar.
Investing has always been gambling, even Warren Buffet made his biggest early wins on all-in bets.
> Leveraged funds are the safest way for the average investor to get access to leverage
I... do not agree that leveraged funds are somehow a safest way to access leverage.
Every product including leverage has inherently a non-linear P&L. And from my experience, non sophisticated investors always struggle to grasp the implications of that. It makes returns (on capital) very path dependent, and very nasty during volatile regimes. It breaks the naive assumption of "well I could always hold and wait for the dust to settle".
> unlike margin there is no risk of margin calls
This is a bit of a weird statement. Leverage implies margin, you cannot make it disappear, the funding and associated risk has to come from somewhere, it's just that it is continuously applied, instead of fixed timings.
I do agree that it simplifies planning and reserve management though.
> even Warren Buffet made his biggest early wins on all-in bets.
This is a bit disingenious, note that Buffet did not use leverage...
> This is a bit disingenious, note that Buffet did not use leverage...
In a way, but Buffet wasn't making those investments exclusively using his own money. Effectively there's a degree of implied leverage when you get a performance reward from investing other people's money.
Leveraged funds can be an excellent tool for portfolio construction, for example, products like 100% stocks + 100% bonds (so -100% cash; internally borrowed in the ETF), e.g. RSSB.
And just because it's available doesn't mean it should be your only ETF/ETP. Not a recommendation or advice, but something like 50% TQQQ, and 50% risk-off asset (gold, bonds, whatever); rebalanced regularly isn't crazy, and might even have alpha.
Generally the default fund in a decent 401(k) (employer managed but largely employee funded retirement plan) will be a "target date retirement fund" that contains a mix of equities and bonds according to the expected risk tolerance of someone at that age, and generally the equity component is also split between US and foreign equities.
Disagree on that being the advice in the US. Most basic investment advice (and target-date funds) will use a three-fund portfolio containing US, ex-US, and bonds.
As a Korean, the reason people rush into stocks is simple: labor value has been completely destroyed.
Realistically, it's nearly impossible for high income young people in their 20s and 30s to buy a house in Seoul. That forces them to move to the provinces, but then there's almost no infrastructure. No companies either.
So many people turn to leverage in hopes of a life changing reversal.
The recent rise in the KOSPI index happened because some of the loopholes that Korean conglomerates used to make inheritance easier were blocked by revisions to the Commercial Act. One of the uncertainties that had been called 'Korean risk' was removed, and the market went up.
For a Korean man, the moment you leave Seoul, not just the outskirts, but out of Seoul entirely, there's no one to talk to about IT jobs. I live outside Seoul, and the infrastructure gap is about 10 to 20 years behind. On top of that, there are no IT companies, just mostly low income manual labor jobs.
The median monthly income for Korean men is about 3 million KRW, while the average Seoul apartment price is 1.3 billion KRW and the median price is 997 million KRW. That means you'd need to work for about 25~30 years just to buy a home, but job tenure is getting shorter, so that's not realistic.
So people gamble on leverage, hoping for a life changing win. Everyone around me knows it's gambling, but they figure they're already in a dead end situation anyway, so they have nothing to lose.
I live and work in IT outside Seoul, but the IT business has already matured, and there are many well established companies. The Korean market itself is small, so early movers have already taken the lead. There's no room for latecomers like me. That's why I take on work from the West, China, and Japan regardless, but even that's hard without a reputation.
The moment you leave Seoul, a Korean's chances of success drop to nearly zero. That's why people cling to the city so desperately.
And honestly, I've hardly gambled on my life. But I'm drowning in debt, and sometimes I feel like a fool for working so hard.
To be precise, it's because of Korea's corporate structure. Korea operates in a way that favors large conglomerates. Since the media is also owned by corporations, it tends to protect corporate interests rather than amplify citizens' voices.
The core problem with 'sacrificing one region to save another' is that you need a market to consume what you're saving. But there is no market to consume it. Most regions are organized around subcontractors for specific large conglomerates.
The typical structure is: large conglomerate (prime contractor) -> powerful local subcontractor -> sub->subcontractor. Often, the powerful local subcontractors are companies founded by former executives from the prime contractor.
In other words, it's a subcontractor-of-subcontractor structure—and the state doesn't block it; it actually encourages it. To survive, independent developers have to work as sub-subcontractors. Because starting a business requires capital.
I've worked across a wide range of fields: finance, drones, factory machinery, tax SaaS, and more. I've worked in over 20 domains. Why? Because while developers are scarce in regional areas and needed, when project budgets shrink, developer labor costs are the first to be cut. Since there's no other work, developers accept poor conditions. And once you get on the wrong side of a powerful local company, finding the next job becomes difficult.
Most independent developers can't succeed unless they can handle this wide range of domains.
Suppose you make an app that 1 in 10,000 people use. In the US, with 340 million people, that's 34,000 users. Add in the English-speaking world, and the potential user base is even larger. And since the global UI/UX standards are based on US standards, it's easier for apps to scale globally.
But if you release an app in Korean, and 1 in 10,000 people use it, that's only about 5,000 users out of 50 million. The scale gap is enormous.
That's why Korea has concentrated everything into one region to maintain global competitiveness. This is the side effect.
But I think this is becoming a global problem. Just as the fertility crisis isn't unique to Korea, Korea is just a more visible case because its landmass is small. I'm convinced that all countries will eventually go through similar pains
Can people live cheaply in the outskirts and work remotely for a foreign company? Or would that still not get you on track to be able to buy in/near Seoul?
It could work, but those types of jobs (paying significantly more than local salary and yet fully remote in a different time zone) are few and not easy to get nowadays (not that they were ubiquitous before).
Korean and English have very different grammatical structures. I can read English in real time, but writing, listening, and speaking are difficult. (Maybe it'd be different if I were more proficient, but I've never lived abroad, so that's how it is.)
Because of that, remote work usually requires speaking, so most interviews end in rejection. I can communicate through chat, but the vast majority of employers want interviews.
And as the IT industry has grown and become more established, Korea has developed its own standards that diverge from global norms. This makes Korean IT hard to sell globally. I try to follow global standards, but in Korea, I'm told I'm using 'wrong technology' or doing 'over-engineering.'
Either way, the technology you learn or implement is often quite different—because the market leaders set the technical standards.
So independent developers in Korea have to learn both Korean IT standards and global standards—on top of English. (This is extremely painful.)
So if I could do remote work for a foreign company, it would be really, really great. But in reality, English is usually where things fall apart. Koreans often praise Korean as a 'scientific' language, but for most Koreans, it actually acts as a shackle. On the other hand, it's also because of this language that the domestic market is able to maintain at least a minimum level of viability.
Around the Evergrande collapse there were stories about Chinese retail investors who had pushed money into their domestic real estate industry’s stocks.
Also you might painting too wide a brush with “the West”. I wouldn’t assume that Americans and, say, Austrians have similar exposure to public markets.
US household assets are fairly well distributed between real-estate and equity markets. China for example previously had ~70% of its household wealth tied up in real-estate, which has suffered enormous declines over the past four or five years.
That said, there's no question that US households have grown fat on the massive expansion of the tech giants. A one trillion $ market cap was shocking not long ago, now you've got Apple and Nvidia at $4-$5 trillion, each about as valuable as China's top 25-30 stocks combined. The US wealth base is highly exposed to a PE multiple compression event, which is likely whenever the bubbly valuations centered around the AI boom reduce.
Also to put a reference figure on it, China's top 500 stocks are roughly worth $11.5 trillion. Nvidia + Apple are worth a combined ~$9.6 trillion.
Both NVIDIA and Apple derive much of their wealth from off-shored manufacturing to… drumroll… China! (PRC+ROC)
If China decides to take over Taiwan and nationalises TMSC, redirecting their top tier silicon to 100% Chinese companies then what are the American firms worth?
Indeed. It's so much bigger (in notional terms) than the underlying stock market that you can manipulate it by making large bets in the derivatives market, then move the underlying cash markets with much smaller bets, and collect profit.
That is what Jane Street (IIRC) was accused of. Some of its traders then went to another hedge fund and did the same trick there, reducing Jane Street's profit, and ended up being sued by Jane Street. (BTW, Jane Street claims it was not manipulation, but basis trade arbitrage.)
> It is also used despite many developed countries or regions not being culturally Western (e.g. Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao)
Especially in Korea, I know there's a sense of despair in the young adult population on their future. How will they afford to get married, have kids, have a house? Leads to chasing financial outcomes that are uncertain - crypto boom in Korea years back is an example
For those who don't know what's going on in Korea, KOSPI is up 3x in the last year and a large amount of HBM employees have made huge amounts of bonus pay. This has led to an insane FOMO frenzy in a society that's already very competitive.
Add to that, stock gains in Korea are often used to finance housing purchases (or real estate investment) so many retail investors are scared of being "locked out" of housing (which is a requisite status symbol for dating or marriage) if they're not making the same capital gains others are.
Currently Korean social media is full of stories of leveraged day traders who've gotten rich the past year, HBM employees who've made bonuses worth decades of salary (e.g. memes of Samsung employees in luxury cars), etc. Lots of comments along the lines of "everyone is getting rich except me". It's all reminiscent of the crypto frenzy in the US a few years ago but way more intense and concentrated.
I wish we had a word for this, where everyone’s getting rich, there’s a run on stocks, but prices of assets are all going up. Some people are missing out completely whereas a select few hoard wealth in other forms. And of course the government starting to notice and trying to intervene.
Tulip mania!
Irrational Exuberance
Exoptable Money.
Roaring 20s?
Capitalism?
> housing (which is a requisite status symbol for dating or marriage
I get that culture is hard to change, but it still seems easier than changing the economics. There are men and women out there who presumably are interested in partnering up; at some point you'd think biology will take over irrespective of which achievements have been unlocked. What's stopping them?
You think status signaling isn't part of biology? That it just happened to independently appear in every human culture and many animals that we are aware of?
Social status is a big part of what makes a person attractive especially if you're a man.
Sure, but - by definition - half the population is below average social status. At least here in the US, those people are still partnering up.
Oh, you forget - we lie about social status, including to ourselves. Women and men. And as for what determines status ... first rule of social interaction: you can't ask a woman her age and you can't ask a man his wage (in other words: humans are social animals and this information is only available through playing the social game of deception).
So in practice 80% or so of the population is below "average social status". People who don't absolutely need to pair up (historically women can't earn, but require, money and men can't take care of a home/place to sleep, but have to), will refuse to pair up with someone below their signaled social status. In other words: there are TWO average social statuses. First, there is what people believe their own social status is. Second there is what people, on average, see as others social status.
In a "natural" human society, it's basically impossible for anyone over 25 or so to "pair up", unless they have a partner, which is not common at all. Since social status ALSO determines the distribution of food, at that point the first real period of weakness (you get sick, you hurt your leg, you ...) is the end. You can delay this by forming cliques, but not by that much.
Oh and of course, that has an analog in our society. Look how much a plumber gets paid (ie. it's pretty disappointing), despite the shortage. There are low status and high status jobs, and even where it doesn't make sense they determine pay. E.g. there are a lot of cities with a total glut of lawyers ... it makes no sense to give 7 figure wages for people when 70% of whom can't find work, but we do. By contrast there is an incredible shortage of construction workers, and still they're not paid half what a lawyer gets. Rather we'll get immigrants to do it. Why? Because a great many people would rather signal that they're above manual labor than get 7 figures a year.
In other words: I will live in destitution rather than admit I'm low social status, even if low social status would pay well.
Oh and don't forget credit cards: 80%+ of people worldwide consider feeling rich (and showing off) more important than, ironically, money. Note also the many complaints about the economy, which are never about having or not having money, the big complaint seen everywhere is that people who don't have money "feel poor". One might think it should be perfectly normal to not have money and feel poor.
Which also is the big lesson in investment that's coming up: countries will raise inflation to any level rather than cut expenditures. That's how we got to 20% inflation in the 80s. That's how Argentina or even Zimbabwe got there. Ie: when we're getting close to that point, for the love of God, don't buy government bonds.
Preventing obvious human habits from destroying us seems to me the best reason to really give developing AI your best effort. Because the whole "job destruction" argument has a hole in it you could fit a planet through: people don't want to do the destroyed jobs. What do you think is the best: AI taking jobs? Or, that we force young people into nursing, plumbing, construction, ... through more and more extreme measures and making everyone a lot poorer? That's how the system rebalances after all, make people poorer until the plumbing gets done.
Those are the choices. AI it is. At least for me.
System of education? The current form of it have nudges and blockers everywhere to stop population explosion leading us all into Soylent Green type situation.
I thought Biology drives coupling, not partnering.
Porn and 4B divert coupling...
What’s ‘4B’?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4B_movement
This is civilization-level apoptosis. The civilization detects that it is broken and makes room for a properly functioning one to take over.
They've also driven a noticeable drop in stock prices in the closing minutes that have been used by quant algos to squeeze even more money out of the market as the leverage is a unmanaged algo that was predictable and could be driven up before it had to force trades.
It's not just the gambling of people, but the systematic use of bots to squeeze leveraged vehicles.
Housing usually is needed for living. Not a status symbol for dating. I see how it can help the same way as not starving to death will also help with dating, but the framing is odd.
Referring to ownership, not renting
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What are you trying to say, that everyone should own a house? Surely you realize that is not a possibility for many, if not most, young people around the world.
that's the problem
With housing their being so cheap, what the hell is the problem anyway? It's impossible to have expensive real estate in a country that's dying out fast.
Housing is incredibly expensive. Roughly half of Korea lives and works in the Seoul metro area. The average salary is roughly 40,000 USD and the average apartment (maybe 84 square meters) is over 1 million USD.
Government efforts to cool housing inflation have resulted in a 40 percent minimum down payment for a mortgage.
Housing in Seoul and much of Gyeonggi is a pipe dream for most
Well it's their problem if everyone wants to live in the capital. Perhaps it's another manifestation of people being deeply irrational.
>It's impossible to have expensive real estate
no it's very possible because in an aging country people relocate to a handful of cities. 50% of South Korea's population now lives in the Seoul metropolitan area. The real estate that's getting cheaper is the one decaying in the countryside.
It's like saying Russia can't have expensive real estate because the country is big, what matters is where people are actually moving.
Cities in Australia consistently rank in the top 5 most expensive real estate indices and we ain't short of space here, it's just not many people are interested in living in a dusty Outback desert.
And for many, if the property is not within 10km of the Sydney or Melbourne city centre, it might as well be in the dusty Outback desert.
I'd think Starlink will help change this. Not for living in the actual dusty Outback (which has its own risks/dangers/inconveniences), but for living in many other places in Australia that are lovely and not too far from desirable areas.
Most people want to live where other people live, for reasons ranging from social connections to access to services and infrastructure. I doubt broadband access access plays even a small role.
Yeah, like I said, not talking about the boonies. There are plenty of lovely places that are >10km from those two cities, but which are still close enough to services and infrastructure.
But indeed Moscow is one of the cheapest cities to buy housing in Europe... On par with poorer East European capitals and second-tier Central European cities.
Huh? According to https://seoulhomes.kr/en/properties/prices/, in Q1 2026, the average apartment in Seoul sells for ~₩1.2B, ~₩45M per 3.3sqm, that's ~840k USD and ~9.6k USD per sqm or ~900 USD per sqft, in what world is that cheap?
Population can age fast while the supply of desirable places to live still doesn't meet demand.
The story we were telling young people that if they apply themselves, go to school and get a job they'll be able to afford family, house, vacations is moving further and further away for more and more people.
The turn towards financial nihilism will continue.
Yeah, but it’s also plain greed, and it’d be hard to tell the ratio.
The threshold for greed is higher than the median net worth of an American. We tell people they need "generational" wealth to a make it in this country because housing, education, and healthcare are all so expensive
No need to tell. Just look at who can afford detached single family homes in tier1 cities: white-collar Dual-income and generational wealth families.
Governments have only managed to slow, not stop or reverse this trend.
Seems to me that many people do not care about part 3 anymore.
While "financial nihilism" is part of it, I think we should be putting even more attention towards the forces that are trying to deliberately encourage it for profit.
Kind of like pathological gambling: Sure, some people are susceptible, but there's also an entire industry around finding them and making them succumb.
We live in a capitalist society, not a labor-oriented society. The way to make big money is through capital - ie: purchasing property and then selling it for (hopefully) profit.
Laboring in a capitalist economy is a loser's strategy because your capital is you body's ability to produce value and that has a maximum physical limit. Why participate in an economy using a strategy that has a natural upper bound? It makes no sense. You're not even playing the game poorly - you're not playing the game at all.
This is the logical end conclusion, but in reality, we live in a middle ground where plenty of people have and will live in a society where they can sell their labor for a perfectly content life.
Did it never occur to you how the vast majority of people acquire initial capital is via labor?
The vast majority of lottery winners buy lottery tickets.
"Smart men go broke three ways: liquor, ladies, and leverage." -- Charlie Munger
(Which is not to imply that these are smart men).
Some time ago it occurred to me that you can't just spend extreme amounts of money. You can only lose it by gambling. In a casino, on investment or on business, it doesn't matter.
Investment or business do also have some gambling factors in it. And both usually cost extreme amounts of money to get started.
However, I found that if the bar of doing business is high enough, "investing" in stock market maybe safer than start a proper business. Because if a business failed, you likely lost a huge amount wealth, including everything you put into the business and maybe more. Whereas if you buy stock responsibly (for example, DCA VOO/&QQQ), there's a high chance you'll eventually bounce back.
Maybe that's one reason the young Koreans invested so much in their stock markets. Their country failed them by restricting them from opportunities, the only way they can save themselves is by gambling.
I recently heard that 80% of small businesses - bodegas, non-chain restaurants and so on - make less money than if they'd just put their starting capital in the stock market.
You also can't earn extreme amounts of money. You can only win it by gambling.
Indeed, pg has an essay about it: https://paulgraham.com/selfindulgence.html
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It's a quote, and somewhat of a figure of speech. Also Charlie was born in 1924; he was literally of a different era.
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The problem isn't leveraged funds, it's margin on leveraged funds.
Leveraged funds are the safest way for the average investor to get access to leverage because unlike margin there is no risk of margin calls, and your money generally won't go to zero unlike options which are vastly more complicated and can expire.
The reality is that using leveraged funds (or any leverage) is a completely rational move because the average person will never retire wealthy unless they're already making a tech salary or similar.
Investing has always been gambling, even Warren Buffet made his biggest early wins on all-in bets.
> Leveraged funds are the safest way for the average investor to get access to leverage
I... do not agree that leveraged funds are somehow a safest way to access leverage.
Every product including leverage has inherently a non-linear P&L. And from my experience, non sophisticated investors always struggle to grasp the implications of that. It makes returns (on capital) very path dependent, and very nasty during volatile regimes. It breaks the naive assumption of "well I could always hold and wait for the dust to settle".
> unlike margin there is no risk of margin calls
This is a bit of a weird statement. Leverage implies margin, you cannot make it disappear, the funding and associated risk has to come from somewhere, it's just that it is continuously applied, instead of fixed timings.
I do agree that it simplifies planning and reserve management though.
> even Warren Buffet made his biggest early wins on all-in bets.
This is a bit disingenious, note that Buffet did not use leverage...
> This is a bit disingenious, note that Buffet did not use leverage...
In a way, but Buffet wasn't making those investments exclusively using his own money. Effectively there's a degree of implied leverage when you get a performance reward from investing other people's money.
Buffet funded his investments with insurance float
Leveraged funds can be an excellent tool for portfolio construction, for example, products like 100% stocks + 100% bonds (so -100% cash; internally borrowed in the ETF), e.g. RSSB.
And just because it's available doesn't mean it should be your only ETF/ETP. Not a recommendation or advice, but something like 50% TQQQ, and 50% risk-off asset (gold, bonds, whatever); rebalanced regularly isn't crazy, and might even have alpha.
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For a second, it appeared some found out.
https://www.reutersconnect.com/item/south-korean-retail-inve...
But it seems there's still a lot in their FA phase in the FAFO cycle.
I would be really interested to learn what the default advice for retail investors is across countries.
In Germany the consensus is MSCI World or FTSE All-World ETFs.
I believe in the US most advice goes to VTSAX (US Total Market), VOO (S&P500) and maybe QQQ (NASDAQ100) which means only US stocks.
What gets recommended in other countries?
Generally the default fund in a decent 401(k) (employer managed but largely employee funded retirement plan) will be a "target date retirement fund" that contains a mix of equities and bonds according to the expected risk tolerance of someone at that age, and generally the equity component is also split between US and foreign equities.
e.g. Fidelity's fund for people planning to retire around 2050 https://fundresearch.fidelity.com/mutual-funds/summary/31579...
3% less annual returns than the S&P500 over 10 years and the entire fund lifetime. That's a considerable difference.
target date funds always confused me, b/c they don't account for the rest of my portfolio.
My IRA/401(k) actually has close to 100% cash/bonds to minimize annual taxable impact and the rest of my portfolio is equities.
Italy - vwce or any all world
This of course if you're doing by yourself, banks definitely won't recommend that but some other bullshit fund with high costs and poor performances
Disagree on that being the advice in the US. Most basic investment advice (and target-date funds) will use a three-fund portfolio containing US, ex-US, and bonds.
In Europe bonds are mostly out of fashion because they pay very little or have considerable risk of default. At least for retail investors.
It’s just gambling, not investing.
It may be true but if you have nothing else going for you I can see why some folks would throw their leveraged hat in the ring.
Not the first time, not the last either. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/creditcards/themes/... https://www.bis.org/publ/bppdf/bispap46k.pdf South Korean gamblers are the index species of any global credit bubble.
As a Korean, the reason people rush into stocks is simple: labor value has been completely destroyed.
Realistically, it's nearly impossible for high income young people in their 20s and 30s to buy a house in Seoul. That forces them to move to the provinces, but then there's almost no infrastructure. No companies either.
So many people turn to leverage in hopes of a life changing reversal.
The recent rise in the KOSPI index happened because some of the loopholes that Korean conglomerates used to make inheritance easier were blocked by revisions to the Commercial Act. One of the uncertainties that had been called 'Korean risk' was removed, and the market went up.
For a Korean man, the moment you leave Seoul, not just the outskirts, but out of Seoul entirely, there's no one to talk to about IT jobs. I live outside Seoul, and the infrastructure gap is about 10 to 20 years behind. On top of that, there are no IT companies, just mostly low income manual labor jobs.
The median monthly income for Korean men is about 3 million KRW, while the average Seoul apartment price is 1.3 billion KRW and the median price is 997 million KRW. That means you'd need to work for about 25~30 years just to buy a home, but job tenure is getting shorter, so that's not realistic.
So people gamble on leverage, hoping for a life changing win. Everyone around me knows it's gambling, but they figure they're already in a dead end situation anyway, so they have nothing to lose.
I live and work in IT outside Seoul, but the IT business has already matured, and there are many well established companies. The Korean market itself is small, so early movers have already taken the lead. There's no room for latecomers like me. That's why I take on work from the West, China, and Japan regardless, but even that's hard without a reputation.
The moment you leave Seoul, a Korean's chances of success drop to nearly zero. That's why people cling to the city so desperately.
And honestly, I've hardly gambled on my life. But I'm drowning in debt, and sometimes I feel like a fool for working so hard.
> I live outside Seoul, and the infrastructure gap is about 10 to 20 years behind
That actually sounds like a business opportunity, if there is a steady stream of people moving out if Seoul.
> On top of that, there are no IT companies
Why don't Korean companies embrace WFH? Again sounds like a huge competitive advantage on the job market
To be precise, it's because of Korea's corporate structure. Korea operates in a way that favors large conglomerates. Since the media is also owned by corporations, it tends to protect corporate interests rather than amplify citizens' voices.
The core problem with 'sacrificing one region to save another' is that you need a market to consume what you're saving. But there is no market to consume it. Most regions are organized around subcontractors for specific large conglomerates.
The typical structure is: large conglomerate (prime contractor) -> powerful local subcontractor -> sub->subcontractor. Often, the powerful local subcontractors are companies founded by former executives from the prime contractor.
In other words, it's a subcontractor-of-subcontractor structure—and the state doesn't block it; it actually encourages it. To survive, independent developers have to work as sub-subcontractors. Because starting a business requires capital.
I've worked across a wide range of fields: finance, drones, factory machinery, tax SaaS, and more. I've worked in over 20 domains. Why? Because while developers are scarce in regional areas and needed, when project budgets shrink, developer labor costs are the first to be cut. Since there's no other work, developers accept poor conditions. And once you get on the wrong side of a powerful local company, finding the next job becomes difficult.
Most independent developers can't succeed unless they can handle this wide range of domains.
Suppose you make an app that 1 in 10,000 people use. In the US, with 340 million people, that's 34,000 users. Add in the English-speaking world, and the potential user base is even larger. And since the global UI/UX standards are based on US standards, it's easier for apps to scale globally.
But if you release an app in Korean, and 1 in 10,000 people use it, that's only about 5,000 users out of 50 million. The scale gap is enormous.
That's why Korea has concentrated everything into one region to maintain global competitiveness. This is the side effect.
But I think this is becoming a global problem. Just as the fertility crisis isn't unique to Korea, Korea is just a more visible case because its landmass is small. I'm convinced that all countries will eventually go through similar pains
> That actually sounds like a business opportunity, if there is a steady stream of people moving out if Seoul.
They aren't. That's why those areas are falling behind.
Can people live cheaply in the outskirts and work remotely for a foreign company? Or would that still not get you on track to be able to buy in/near Seoul?
It could work, but those types of jobs (paying significantly more than local salary and yet fully remote in a different time zone) are few and not easy to get nowadays (not that they were ubiquitous before).
English(lang) is the problem.
Korean and English have very different grammatical structures. I can read English in real time, but writing, listening, and speaking are difficult. (Maybe it'd be different if I were more proficient, but I've never lived abroad, so that's how it is.)
Because of that, remote work usually requires speaking, so most interviews end in rejection. I can communicate through chat, but the vast majority of employers want interviews.
And as the IT industry has grown and become more established, Korea has developed its own standards that diverge from global norms. This makes Korean IT hard to sell globally. I try to follow global standards, but in Korea, I'm told I'm using 'wrong technology' or doing 'over-engineering.'
Either way, the technology you learn or implement is often quite different—because the market leaders set the technical standards.
So independent developers in Korea have to learn both Korean IT standards and global standards—on top of English. (This is extremely painful.)
So if I could do remote work for a foreign company, it would be really, really great. But in reality, English is usually where things fall apart. Koreans often praise Korean as a 'scientific' language, but for most Koreans, it actually acts as a shackle. On the other hand, it's also because of this language that the domestic market is able to maintain at least a minimum level of viability.
The headline is brilliant.
If you are in a hole, dig deeper.
Are other countries like the West where 'markets' (equities, derivatives, prediction) have a wide ranging pervasive effect on culture?
Around the Evergrande collapse there were stories about Chinese retail investors who had pushed money into their domestic real estate industry’s stocks.
Also you might painting too wide a brush with “the West”. I wouldn’t assume that Americans and, say, Austrians have similar exposure to public markets.
US household assets are fairly well distributed between real-estate and equity markets. China for example previously had ~70% of its household wealth tied up in real-estate, which has suffered enormous declines over the past four or five years.
That said, there's no question that US households have grown fat on the massive expansion of the tech giants. A one trillion $ market cap was shocking not long ago, now you've got Apple and Nvidia at $4-$5 trillion, each about as valuable as China's top 25-30 stocks combined. The US wealth base is highly exposed to a PE multiple compression event, which is likely whenever the bubbly valuations centered around the AI boom reduce.
Also to put a reference figure on it, China's top 500 stocks are roughly worth $11.5 trillion. Nvidia + Apple are worth a combined ~$9.6 trillion.
Both NVIDIA and Apple derive much of their wealth from off-shored manufacturing to… drumroll… China! (PRC+ROC)
If China decides to take over Taiwan and nationalises TMSC, redirecting their top tier silicon to 100% Chinese companies then what are the American firms worth?
If China takes over Taiwan, TMSC's assets are being reduced to rubble before Taiwan's first shot back.
Which is why Taiwan is safe until china can produce domestically because their power comes from exports.
China is not going to sabotage themselves like that.
I thought Taiwan is safe until the US can produce domestically, no?
> reduced to rubble
By whom?
China would be mad to destroy the most valuable building on that island.
I doubt Taiwain would bomb themselves.
I can't see anyone in the US acting like this either.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40441650 "TSMC EUV machines equipped with remote self-destruct in case of invasion"
TSMC is thought to be rigged to physically self-destruct in case of Chinese invasion.
Auatralians are a great case study. Once you control for pensions and similar indirect exposure, Australians have very high stock market exposure.
The Indian derivatives market is huge. Lots of people gambling there.
Indeed. It's so much bigger (in notional terms) than the underlying stock market that you can manipulate it by making large bets in the derivatives market, then move the underlying cash markets with much smaller bets, and collect profit.
That is what Jane Street (IIRC) was accused of. Some of its traders then went to another hedge fund and did the same trick there, reducing Jane Street's profit, and ended up being sued by Jane Street. (BTW, Jane Street claims it was not manipulation, but basis trade arbitrage.)
Of course, 9 out of 10 gambler end up in the red.
Do you consider South Korea the "West"?
Don't get caught up on the geography.
> It is also used despite many developed countries or regions not being culturally Western (e.g. Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao)
It's a USA colony so yes
Korea. A lot of people have been gambling on margin.
Especially in Korea, I know there's a sense of despair in the young adult population on their future. How will they afford to get married, have kids, have a house? Leads to chasing financial outcomes that are uncertain - crypto boom in Korea years back is an example
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