Retail Stock Traders Become Key Voting Bloc in Korea’s Election

(Bloomberg) -- First they shook stocks. Now South Korea's army of nearly 10 million retail equity traders is helping reshape politics as the country counts down to its presidential election.

The leading candidates have taken to YouTube with promises of tax changes and more equities buying from the National Pension Service to win over the legions of individual investors who now account for almost 70% of daily turnover in the country's share market.

With polling showing that the March 9 race is too close to call, the opposition party's Yoon Suk-yeol is pledging to remove a capital gains levy on share sales and crack down on practices that favor financial institutions and company executives and over small stock holders. 

The ruling party's Lee Jae-myung has promised to scrap tax on securities transactions. He wants the NPS to be much more active in the local market to help recover $230 billion wiped from the value of the benchmark Kospi index over the past eight months.  

“It is the first time we've seen stock markets become such a key issue during a presidential election campaign,” said Hong Chunuk, chief executive of Richgo Investment in Seoul. “Nothing will happen overnight but expectations are high that the presidential election will bring changes to the market.”

In years gone by, financial markets policy was geared to the needs of business, but not so now. Lee and Yoon have in their sights mom-and-pop investors, pensioners trying to supplement retirement savings and the tech-savvy young adults who see more opportunity in day trading than the part-time and casual jobs of the gig economy. 

They were courting retail traders on YouTube long before their traditional presidential debates on mainstream Korean broadcasters. Lee and Yoon's interviews on a program called Sampro that's popular among individual investors have garnered a combined 10 million views since they were uploaded in December.  

The candidates are both concerned that short-selling shares not only tends to put downward pressure on the market but also hurts retail investors who employ simple strategies that count on stocks rising. Yoon, a former public prosecutor, has flagged tougher penalties for naked short-selling, a practice that involves selling shares without even borrowing them first.

While retail trading has surged in many markets during the pandemic, it's gone into overdrive in Korea amid pressure on living standards and a proliferation of trading apps on mobile devices.

The number of trading accounts has roughly doubled since the last election in 2017 and about one in every five Koreans have become stock market investors, according to data from the Korea Securities Depository.

The ruling party's Lee, a former provincial governor and civil rights lawyer, has gone as far as targeting the 5,000-point mark for the Kospi gauge, which is well above its record high and almost double the current level.

“5,000 points can be achieved when there are expectations that the stock market will be supported by a president who knows markets well,” Lee wrote on his Facebook page in February.

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