빚으로 쌓아 올린 ‘레버리지의 함정’… 한국 금융시장이 마주한 두 가지 과제 > K-wave Trends

It is clear why the financial authorities have drawn their sword on jeonse loans. This is due to the concern that the rental deposit loan has gone beyond its original purpose of being a housing support measure for actual consumers and is being abused as a means of ‘circumvention leverage’ to actually encourage the rise in housing prices. The Financial Services Commission has established a policy to further strengthen the loan screening of banks by drastically reducing the guarantee ratio of jeonse loans in the metropolitan area and regulated areas from the existing 80% to 70%. In addition, new loans by non-residential single-home owners are prohibited in principle, and debt service ratio (DSR) regulations are partially introduced for high-priced jeonse to suppress excessive borrowing by the high-income class. This is a strategy to eliminate the real estate bubble without harming the housing stability of low-income people, but some are concerned that the loan threshold for low-income people may also increase.

In the stock market, the Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix single-stock leveraged ETF, known as ‘Samjeonix’, has been heating up the market immediately after its listing. Within two weeks of launch, individual investors poured trillions of won into these products, ranking them as the number one net purchaser, and securities companies carried out aggressive marketing with ample liquidity and price management. However, this investment fever is having the side effect of amplifying market volatility. This is because leveraged products have a rebalancing structure that buys when stock prices rise and sells when they fall, causing catch-up trading whenever the market falls sharply and causing a ‘short gamma’ phenomenon that further increases the extent of stock price declines. In particular, the excessive concentration of funds in leading semiconductor stocks is resulting in maximizing the volatility of the entire KOSPI.

The biggest fear faced by leveraged investors is the ‘negative compound interest effect.’ Many investors simply expect that the principal will be returned when the stock price recovers, but leveraged products have the structural trap of accumulating losses greater than the underlying asset as the ups and downs are repeated. In fact, the ETF's report card, which recorded a decline more than twice that of its stock in the recent plunge, left a harsh lesson to individual investors. In the process of rising after a fall, a rise much larger than the fall is needed to recover the principal, so in a sideways market or a market with frequent fluctuations, you experience your assets melting. Nevertheless, the financial authorities are most concerned about the fact that overseas investment demand for ‘triple leverage’ products still remains, and that speculative transactions seeking only short-term profits do not stop even domestically.

Financial authorities are busy belatedly preparing countermeasures, such as watching the overheating of leveraged products and issuing investment caution messages. As the products initially introduced for the return of Seohak Ants to the domestic market and revitalization of the capital market turned out to be poisonous, securities companies are being ordered to check investor tendencies and provide strong notices on high-risk products. However, the investment craze has spread out of control to the extent that nearly 900,000 people have already completed leverage training. Experts advise that these high-risk products should be thoroughly managed from a short-term trading perspective rather than long-term investment, but in fact, in the market, chase buying continues with self-deprecating voices calling it ‘legal gambling.’ Ultimately, the challenge of finding healthy resilience in our markets remains between financial authorities' regulations and investors' own vigilance.