{"id":580055,"date":"2026-08-02T09:15:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-02T09:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/580055\/"},"modified":"2026-08-02T09:15:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T09:15:10","slug":"south-koreas-ai-stock-crash-teaches-retail-investors-an-old-market-lesson-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/580055\/","title":{"rendered":"South Korea\u2019s AI stock crash teaches retail investors an old market lesson \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe game taught me the game,\u201d wrote 1920s trader Jesse Livermore. \u201cAnd it didn\u2019t spare me the rod while teaching.\u201d<\/p>\n

It still doesn\u2019t, as retail investors in South Korea<\/a> are discovering. One of the Financial Times\u2019s most-read stories recently carried the headline: \u201c\u2018My life\u2019s screwed\u2019: Korean investors stress out after AI bubble bursts.\u201d<\/p>\n

The scale of the recent swings<\/a> has been brutal. The Kospi cratered 17 per cent in three days, and 40 per cent since June, before rebounding sharply. <\/p>\n

The index, dominated by Samsung<\/a> and SK Hynix, remains up about 50 per cent in 2026, but that\u2019s little comfort to latecomers who chased the enormous rally. <\/p>\n

Almost half of its Samsung investors are now nursing losses, said one brokerage, as are nearly 70 per cent of SK Hynix investors.<\/p>\n

Leverage made a bad situation worse, with regulators restricting access to newly approved leveraged ETFs, but only after many fell more than 60 per cent.<\/p>\n

This has been no niche trading frenzy, with South Korea having nearly 110 million active stock accounts, or around two for every citizen.<\/p>\n

In the US, too, 2026\u2019s best performers have been battered, according to Bespoke Investment Group, falling an average of 36 per cent in July.<\/p>\n

And let\u2019s not go there with SpaceX, which has halved since June\u2019s short-lived peak.<\/p>\n

Livermore would have recognised the pattern. The technology may be new, but the psychology is anything but.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThe game taught me the game,\u201d wrote 1920s trader Jesse Livermore. \u201cAnd it didn\u2019t spare me the rod…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":580056,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,61,60,573,541,2306,80],"class_list":["post-580055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-samsung","tag-south-korea","tag-spacex","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=580055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580055\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/580056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=580055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=580055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=580055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}