Seoul, July 30 (IANS) South Korea’s financial regulator said on Thursday it plans to carry out additional measures to cool the single-stock leveraged exchange-traded funds (ETFs) “as early as possible.”
The announcement by the Financial Services Commission (FSC) came after an emergency market inspection meeting it held with other related agencies on Wednesday night, following concerns the investment product has amplified wild market swings and triggered sharp sell-offs and retail losses.
The FSC plans to prepare legal grounds to activate market stabilization measures by revising the Capital Markets Act with the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), reports Yonhap news agency.
The FSC added it will also have brokerages set limits on the maximum amount of investment into single-stock leveraged ETFs, in order to prevent investors from taking excessive risks by investing a majority of their assets into such ETFs.
Earlier, financial authorities decided to hike the minimum cash deposit for single-stock leveraged ETF investments, which is set to go into effect on Friday.
South Korea’s benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index has shown extreme volatility recently, as its two chipmaking heavyweights — Samsung Electronics and SK hynix — suffered massive losses on renewed concerns over artificial intelligence spending.
After topping 9,000 points in June, the index tumbled to 5,593.56 points Thursday. Single-stock ETFs were launched in the local market on May 27.
Meanwhile, three people have been arrested and one has been red-noticed on suspicion of defrauding investors out of 12.3 billion won ($8.55 million) in an alleged cryptocurrency scam, police said on Thursday.
According to the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency (SMPA), the suspects set up a fraudulent website called “Fxrpntwork.com” and duped 71 investors into depositing approximately 3.4 million Ripple (XRP) coins worth 12.3 billion won in October 2025.
The group promoted the fake platform through portal blog posts, online articles and YouTube videos, falsely promising guaranteed principal along with fixed monthly returns of 1.5 to 1.8 percent, the SMPA said.
Victims were instructed to transfer their XRP from domestic exchanges to designated wallets via an overseas exchange. Once the funds were transferred, the suspects shut down the site and went into hiding.
Police said they launched an investigation last October following intelligence on rising crypto fraud cases. Investigators managed to limit investor losses by tracing the transaction paths and freezing the suspects’ crypto wallet within three days of receiving the initial tip-off.
–IANS
na/
