Single-stock leveraged ETFs have become a retail investor harvesting machine, with South Korean retail investors losing 2.3 trillion won, or about $1.7 billion, in just two months.

BlockBeats news, October 7th, according to data compiled by South Korean financial regulators, since the launch of single-stock leveraged exchange-traded products in May this year, investors are estimated to have lost 2.3 trillion won, or about 1.7 billion US dollars, in just a few months between May 27 and August 14. This is also the first time regulators have disclosed the overall scale of South Korean investors' losses on such high-leverage single-stock products. It should be noted that the above data only covers 10 major South Korean brokerages, and therefore does not represent the total losses of all South Korean investors on leveraged products.

Since July, regulators have successively introduced measures to restrict trading in leveraged single-stock products, including temporarily banning the listing of new related products, raising the minimum cash margin requirement for investors, and requiring investors to receive specialized training before trading. This means that from encouraging the domestic market to launch related products in May to beginning to restrict expansion in July, South Korea's regulatory policy has clearly shifted in less than two months.