Amid a boom in overseas stock investments, significant domestic investment funds are flowing into the U.S. securities market, with some stocks showing that the investment share by 'Seohakgamie' (individual investors in overseas stocks) has reached double digits. This reflects the tendency of Seohakgamie to engage in 'blind investments' when stocks are identified as promising theme stocks such as artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and quantum computing, even if they have relatively small market capitalizations.

However, it is necessary to exercise caution in investment as stocks where Seohakgamie has emerged as major shareholders are likely to experience a sharp drop in stock prices once the bubble bursts.

According to the Korea Securities Depository on the 18th, the investment share of Seohakgamie in quantum computing-related stocks such as 'IonQ' and 'Rigetti Computing,' along with leveraged products like 'Direxion Daily TSLA Bull 2X Shares (TSLL),' which tracks double the daily fluctuations of Tesla's stock price, and 'ProShares UltraPro QQQ ETF (TQQQ),' which tracks three times the daily return of the Nasdaq index, ranges from 10% to 20%, and in some cases even reaches 50%.

Illustration = ChatGPT DALL·E 3 /Courtesy of Broadcom, NVIDIA stock price, NVIDIA, overseas individual investors.

IonQ's market capitalization stands at about $8.5 billion, and as of the 15th, the amount invested by domestic investors held at the depositary exceeds $2.6 billion. Based on the stock price on the 16th, which is around $9 billion, the investment share of Seohakgamie amounts to 29%. It has become known that the founder of IonQ, which is listed on the U.S. Nasdaq market, is South Korean Kim Jeongsang, a professor at Duke University, and during the time when the stock price was surging, the investment share of Seohakgamie exceeded 30%.

Rigetti Computing, linked to the quantum computing theme stocks, also shows an investment share of 11% from South Korean investors. The stock price of Rigetti Computing was just over $1 until November last year, but it skyrocketed to $20 earlier this year as word of mouth spread among Seohakgamie. The current stock price is around $10.

Domestic investors concentrated on TSLL, as its stock price can yield double the profit when Tesla's stock price rises. As of the 15th, the amount held by the depositary from domestic investors investing in this ETF is $2.3 billion. The net worth of this ETF is $4.8 billion, meaning the share of domestic investment funds is close to 50%.

Although it is difficult to precisely verify the investment share as the depositary has not aggregated the data, it is expected that the investment share of South Korean investors in Silk Scribe, Abrobotics, and Amplitude Tech Group, which have attracted significant funds from Seohakgamie in the past month, will be considerable.

Silk Scribe has also drawn substantial domestic funds. Although Silk Scribe is said to be a company developing a new chip known as 'quantum resistance,' it only had revenue of $4.8 million (about 7 billion won) in the first half of last year and has not turned a profit. While its stock price rose from around $0.50 until early December last year to $7-8 this month, the amount Seohakgamie has net purchased in Silk Scribe exceeds $120 million.

As of the 16th, when the stock price dropped to around $4, Silk Scribe's market capitalization is at approximately $400 million. While it is facing delisting in the U.S. stock market as a 'penny stock,' among domestic investors, it is rumored to be a stock with potential to become 'the next Nvidia,' so the holdings by Seohakgamie are presumed to be substantial.

Similarly, Abrobotics, which has autonomous driving radar technology and collaborates with Nvidia, has a market capitalization of around $300 million. In the past month, Seohakgamie has net purchased over $40 million in this stock. It is not an exaggeration to say that Seohakgamie has influenced the stock price of this particular stock.

Experts warn that stocks with high investment shares from Seohakgamie should be approached with caution. A spokesperson from a securities firm noted, 'Looking at recent trends in overseas stock investments, there are many cases where investors make investments simply because a stock is related to 'quantum computing' or 'AI,' without any basic analysis of the company.' They added, 'Unless there is improvement in performance or potential for growth, the bubble will burst, and without investors to absorb the volume, the stock price will inevitably plummet.' They described it as 'no different from a game of hot potato.'