![Employees monitor stock markets and exchange rates at the dealing room of Hana Bank's headquarters in Seoul on Tuesday. The Kospi opened down 355.48 points, or 5.26 percent, at 6,400.27 and extended losses to briefly fall below the 6,000 mark, touching 5,992.91, a drop of 11.29 percent, intraday. [Yonhap]](https://wimg.heraldcorp.com/news/cms/2026/07/28/rcv.YNA.20260728.PYH2026072818080001300_P1.jpg)
As semiconductor shares — the engine of South Korea's stock market — tumbled Tuesday on peak-out fears, a post by a worker who suffered heavy losses on a leveraged SK hynix bet went viral online.
According to Blind, an anonymous community for office workers, a post titled "My life is ruined because of SK hynix leverage" appeared Saturday.
The author, identified only as A, said they work at a bank referred to as K Bank. A started investing 200 million won ($136,000) last October, building the portfolio to 400 million won by March through positions in SK hynix and semiconductor materials, parts and equipment stocks.
A then concluded that semiconductors were unlikely to see explosive gains and sold SK hynix shares at around 1 million won each, rotating into cosmetics, department store, semiconductor materials and ESS stocks. By May, the portfolio had grown to roughly 550 million won on a mark-to-market basis.
But SK hynix's continued rally made A anxious. "The more I studied, the more I felt semiconductors were still deeply undervalued," A wrote, explaining the decision to put roughly 700 million won into a 2x leveraged product on Samsung Electronics and SK hynix shares bought on margin credit. "Now it's down to 220 million won," A added.
"Losing 500 million won in a month — I'm still up about 10 percent from where I started, but I'm under extreme stress," A said.
A then asked: "If I hadn't used 2x leverage, I could have lost 50 percent less. Is there anyone else out there whose life has been ruined by leverage like mine?"
A added: "For 10 years at work, I've only ever lost money on crypto and stocks. I finally thought I had built up some real wealth — and now my heart is breaking."
Online commenters were largely unsympathetic. "If you're up 10 percent, your life isn't ruined," wrote one. Others chimed in: "What's there to complain about?" "Ten percent profit and you're calling it a disaster?" "How much you make on the way up is luck; how much you protect on the way down is skill." "There are people deep in the red — this sounds like a first-world problem." "Leverage is gambling plus drugs." And: "Your life wasn't ruined by leverage — it was ruined by your own choices."
jshan@heraldcorp.com
