Retail investors dump SpaceX, pour back into semiconductor shares

Korean retail investors who had been aggressively snapping up SpaceX shares are rapidly reshuffling their portfolios. After SpaceX's listing sent its share price tumbling, they turned back to semiconductor stocks.

According to the Korea Securities Depository's Seibro portal and Yonhap News Agency, the most purchased US-listed stock among Korean retail investors last week (June 22–26) was SOXL — the Direxion Daily Semiconductors Bull 3X Shares ETF, which tracks the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index at three times its daily return.

Net purchases of SOXL during the period totaled $627.67 million, approaching 1 trillion won.

Micron ranked second with $301.25 million in net purchases, followed by the Roundhill Memory ETF at $208.49 million in third and Intel at $134.06 million in fourth. The Roundhill Memory ETF holds shares of Samsung Electronics and SK hynix.

All four of the top net-purchased stocks were semiconductor-related.

The shift stands in sharp contrast to the four days following SpaceX's listing on June 12, when retail investors poured a combined $1.95 billion into the stock.

During the same period last week, retail investors were net sellers of SpaceX shares, offloading $69.2 million — a move that appears to reflect profit-taking.

SpaceX had surged well above its IPO price of $135, briefly topping $200, before falling back to $153 on June 25.

Micron, meanwhile, jumped from $1,051.77 on June 23 to $1,213.56 on June 25 after the company reported that its third-quarter (March–May) sales had surged 345.7 percent year-on-year.

Korean retail investors' total holdings in SOXL now stand at $6.22 billion, approaching 10 trillion won — making it the fourth-largest US stock holding among individual Korean investors. Their Micron holdings, valued at $5.94 billion, rank fifth.

Their SpaceX holdings have slipped to $1.62 billion (2.49 trillion won), placing the stock 24th on the list. The valuation had climbed as high as $1.91 billion on June 18, lifted by the share price rally.

After recording net selling in US markets for two consecutive months in April and May, Korean retail investors have swung back to net purchases this month, accumulating $870 million on the back of SpaceX and semiconductor stock buying.