The SEC should ban the products behind South Korea’s recent market meltdown

South Korea's financial regulator approved leveraged single-stock ETFs for Samsung and SK Hynix, which saw local investors pour $9.4 billion into them. When tech stocks experienced a correction due to concerns about AI and competition, the leveraged products suffered severe losses—more than double the underlying stock declines. This phenomenon is due to volatility decay, which severely penalizes long-term investment in such volatile markets.