As Korea's stock market whipsaws, newly coined terms and memes that liken the market situation are spreading quickly across social media and online communities.
On the 9th, a new term, "4-sidecar," appeared on online communities and social media. It pokes fun at the fact that a sidecar is triggered about once every four days. A sidecar is a system that temporarily halts program trading when the stock index surges or plunges to mitigate market shocks.
Actual figures back this up. In the KOSPI market, a sidecar has been triggered 33 times in total (16 buy, 17 sell) this year through the previous day. That is about 26.2% of this year's 126 trading days, effectively once every four days. "4-sidecar" is not an exaggeration. It has already surpassed the annual number of triggers (26) during the 2008 global financial crisis.
Extreme volatility is spawning more neologisms. Investors used the terms "chief" and "reverse chief" to describe days when the daily swing reaches ±5%. The term comes from shortening "minus 5 percent" to "Mao," which evokes Mao Zedong, the former Chinese head of state.
Self-deprecating phrases for a crash are also popping up one after another. Representative examples include "big-tall-camel," a twist on "it's all over," and "big beef soup," a parody of "Great Depression." On the other hand, going a step beyond "rolling this up?" which means a rebound after an early plunge, investors also use "absurdly rolling this up?" to mean "rolling this up in an absurd way."
The backdrop for the steady stream of new expressions is greater market volatility. Through the previous day this year, there were 25 trading days when the KOSPI index rose or fell 5% or more on a closing basis. Compared with just two trading days on the same basis last year, the swings have widened.
Memes are also being churned out. In particular, Samsung Electronics(005930) and SK hynix(000660) are frequent subjects. That is because the stock prices of the two names, which had been soaring on expectations of a semiconductor supercycle, have fallen more than 25% and 30% from their peaks, respectively. Figures such as Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong and SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won are depicted as homeless people, contrasting with their wealthy image.
Domestic stocks were rebounding in early trading that day. As of 10:11 a.m., the KOSPI was up 275.22 points, or 3.8%, at 7,522.01, and the KOSDAQ was up 29.46 points, or 3.75%, at 814.46. However, with inflation concerns stemming from U.S.-Iran clashes, sharp swings may continue for the time being, and the creation of neologisms and memes is likely to keep increasing.
The greater the market volatility, the more caution is needed against investment-leading scams that exploit it. Of 16,892 phishing crimes that occurred from January to May this year, 2,774 were investment-leading scams, accounting for 16.4% of the total. Losses over the same period also reached about 209 billion won.
Since October last year, the Korean National Police Agency has been cracking down intensively on investment-leading scams through its integrated response team for telecommunications financial fraud. Police have urged people to immediately stop the conversation if anything seems even slightly suspicious and first verify by calling 112 or 1394 (the main number for the integrated response team for telecommunications financial fraud).