Korean boy investor with 43% gains is new retail trading icon

Watching the business news first thing in the morning is a new routine for 12-year-old South Korean Kwon Joon, as he dreams of becoming the next Warren Buffett after earning stellar returns of 43% from a hobby picked up just last year: buying stocks.

Kwon pestered his mother to open a retail trading account last April with savings of 25 million won ($22,400) as seed money, just as the benchmark KOSPI index began recovering from its biggest dip in a decade. “My role model is Warren Buffett. As a value investor, my dream is making long term profits so that I can help neighbours in need,” said Kwon, who rode the steepest jump by year-end among MSCI’s country indexes.

South Korea’s rookie investors like Kwon, who pursues “value investing” in blue chip shares with funds garnered from gifts, trading mini-car toys and running vending machines, have led the blistering rise of retail trade amid the coronavirus pandemic.

More retail investors are teenagers or even younger, making up more than two-thirds of the total value traded in the nation’s shares, versus less than 50% in 2019. The trend has grown as equity markets lure parents disillusioned with the education system and millennials working from home.

“We live in a different world now, it could be better to become a one-of-a-kind type of person by developing their own talent,” said Kwon’s mother, Lee Eun-joo, who fuelled his passion by looking to expose him to business rather than tuition, seen as key to getting ahead in academics.

 Kwon, with time on his hands during last year’s school closures for the pandemic, drew up a wish list of purchases, which he made during market corrections. These ranged from South Korea’s largest messenger app operator Kakao Corp., to the world’s biggest memory chip maker Samsung Electronics Co., and Hyundai Motor.

Kwon’s success also reflects the employment challenges for young South Koreans, with one in four out of work by January, the worst level on record, despite being among the most highly educated cohort in the OECD club of advanced nations.