Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Beijing, Aug. 24 (Xinhua) in South Korea, economic inequality has given birth to high-quality movies and TV dramas such as "parasites" and "Squid Games". Many South Korean retail investors also wanted a ticket to the road to wealth, so they began to bet frantically on Tesla shares.

South Koreans use Tesla stock as a way to get rich.

Park Sunghyun and her husband sold their house in Seoul, moved into a rental apartment with their 7-year-old son, and invested their family savings of $230,000 (1.6 million yuan) in Tesla's stock.

In South Korea, Park Sung-hyun is not alone in betting all his bets on Elon Musk's electric car company. During the COVID-19 pandemic, South Korean retail investors flocked to Tesla's shares, increasing their total holdings to more than 100 times their previous holdings, worth more than $15 billion (100 billion yuan), making them one of Tesla's key shareholders.

Park Sung-hyun sells houses and speculates in stocks.

It is calculated that Mr Musk is currently Tesla's largest shareholder, with a stake of 14.8 per cent. Now, South Korean retail investors hold a total of 1.6% of Tesla's shares, making it Tesla's seventh-largest shareholder, surpassing Oracle founder Larry Ellison (Larry Ellison) or American asset manager Prudential Group. They tend to be bargain buyers who enter the market when the stock market falls, helping to contain the decline.

The helplessness behind the big bet Tesla, however, there is an unsatisfactory undercurrent behind this upsurge of investment enthusiasm. As the gap between rich and poor widens in South Korea, many investors see risky stock and cryptocurrency bets as the only realistic way to achieve financial freedom.

Tesla is a favorite of retail investors around the world, but in South Korea, Musk has won an almost fanatical following among the struggling working class. They call themselves "Teslams", a mixture of "Tesla" and "Islam" to show their faith in Tesla. Some people also end their tweets with "Temen", a combination of "Tesla" and "amen".

Park and her husband found a job in the financial industry after graduating from college, then got married and started a family. They didn't intend to bet everything on Tesla. But then, when the COVID-19 outbreak broke out in 2020, the Bank of Korea cut interest rates to a record low, bringing the already red-hot property market to a boiling point.

Tesla Korea charging Station

They sold their house at the end of 2019, hoping to buy a bigger one, but they got into trouble as house prices rose beyond their ability to borrow. The same story has been played out in many countries recently, but it is symbolic in South Korea.

Over the past five years, apartment prices in Seoul's metropolitan area have doubled, and house prices have risen by more than 80 percentage points more than wages. The average price of an ordinary and most popular three-bedroom apartment in Seoul is 1.24 billion won (6.3 million yuan), according to the National Bank of Korea.

"I thought I would be able to work for a good company after graduating from college, but the reality is that we are the poorest in our community," said Park Sung-hyun, 40. This frustration is the inspiration of Netflix's popular South Korean TV series Squid Game. "as an office worker, life has too many restrictions."

Musk's charisma, however, the investment is full of red flags. Mr Musk had a public dispute with regulators and an intermittent takeover of Twitter, which led to fluctuations in Tesla's share price.

But investors like Park Sung-hyun have found excitement in this drama. Although Tesla's share price has fallen more than 25 per cent from its 2021 high, it has risen 1900 per cent in the past three years. By contrast, shares in Samsung Electronics, the stock with the largest holdings by South Korean investors, rose only about 40%, while the Kospi index rose even less.

"with this guy (Musk), I think we can gamble everything." Park Sung-hyun said. The shares of Tesla, which she bought at an average price of $668 a share, are well below Tesla's closing price of $870 on August 22. She and her husband see Musk as a visionary who can continue to successfully change the auto industry. "he is doing something that no one has ever thought of before." She said.

According to foreign media calculations based on data from South Korea's central securities depositary, South Korean retail investors held a total of about 1.6 per cent of Tesla as of August 17, more than their combined investment in Google's parent companies Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft and Nvidia.

South Korean retail investors have become Tesla's seventh largest shareholder.

There are no official figures on Tesla's total stake held by US retail investors. However, given the larger scale of investors in Tesla's home market, retail investors are expected to hold more shares in Tesla. Giacomo Pierantoni, head of data at Vanda Research, a Singapore-based firm that tracks retail transactions, estimates that, with the exception of Mr Musk and Mr Ellison, global retail investors own about 15 per cent of Tesla.

Young people can't afford a house Tesla is more attractive among people in their 20s and 30s because they have less venture capital than Park and his wife. Young Koreans think they have no chance to enter the real estate market like their parents, and are increasingly worried about economic hardship like their grandparents. Although South Korea's older generation has worked hard all their lives to help South Korea become a major exporter, South Korea has the highest poverty rate among the 38 members of the OECD.

"I was in a panic and felt that I might never be able to afford a house," said Son Gilhun, a 27-year-old forklift driver. "instead of giving up, I decided to follow my predecessors to buy stocks," he said, who lives in Hanam, a suburb southeast of the capital.

He chose to gamble on Tesla, adopting a frugal lifestyle during the outbreak, investing half of his $2000 monthly salary in stocks and accumulating a stock portfolio worth about $100000. In June, when Tesla's share price fell below $700, Sun Jihong reduced his investment in South Korean stocks and increased his stake in Tesla. His near-term goal is to buy a Tesla. If he can make enough money, the ultimate goal will be to buy a house.

Musk recently sold about 7.92 million shares of Tesla in case the court forced him to buy Twitter. In South Korea, Tesla Teslams fans have mixed reactions to this. Some people vent their disappointment on social media. Others hoped for another bargain-hunting opportunity, but failed to do so.

Sun Jihong is optimistic, saying that Musk's move is "not very desirable, but given the situation of the Twitter acquisition, this is understandable."

Ms Park was angry at first, but she stuck to her choice. "an Teslams like me will not change our investment," she says. "We stand firm."

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