The bus for the campaign against short sellers in Seoul.
Source: Korea Stockholers Alliance
Source: Korea Stockholers Alliance
In the United States, small investors have challenged short sellers by grouping online, renting billboards in Times Square, and even flying banners from planes; in Korea, they drive a bus.
A group of influential Korean retailers has declared “a war on short sellers” in a campaign they call “K-streetbets”, mimicking bettors on Reddit’s now-famous WallStreetBets forum that coordinated an increase in the retail of video games GameStop Corp. to reduce short sellers.
On Saturday, Korea Stockholders Alliance launched a “bus campaign” to make its anti-sales message heard.
The bus is painted with cartoons of people holding placards that say things like, “I hate short sales,” “short sales should be abolished,” and a call for a Financial Services Commission to regulate shares, which is responsible for resuming the lack-sale, “dissolved.” It will start circulating in the capital Seoul from today for one hour every day until sometime in March. On its route: the Blue House, the FSC building and the National Assembly in the city’s financial district.
The push is the latest in nearly 30,000 groups of day traders to permanently make a short-selling ban imposed by Korea early last year to domesticate its markets as the pandemic spread.
Korea imposed a ban on short selling in March last year, and joined several countries such as France and Italy to stop business against actions taken to domesticate markets as the pandemic worsened. Indonesia will do it this month leaving its ban, leaving only Korea as one of the world’s major markets that trade strategy does not allow. Korea plans to extend the ban beyond the March 15 maturity, as retail investors dominating the stock market are growing more and more against shorts.
Submissive short sellers everywhere have it really bad in Korea
More than 200,000 individual traders in Korea signed an anonymous petition posted on Korea’s presidential website, a threshold that requires President Moon Jae-in to respond to the request.
Short sellers are “the axis of Korea’s evil,” Jung Eui-jung, chief executive of the alliance, told Bloomberg in an interview, saying that Korea’s short-term selling rules favor professionals and not small traders as their group.
Before the short-circuit ban was imposed, retail investors who came to dominate investment in the country last year faced stricter restrictions on short-term selling than professionals. They see commercial strategy as the playing field for foreign hedge funds with the intention of hurting local champions.
While the shares shown in the eyes of short sellers are Gamestop and AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. have captured the mania of U.S. day traders, once very short biotech works are Korea’s beloved amateur investors.
Jung’s group said on its website that it wants to “protect” Korean companies Celltrion Inc., a $ 45 billion biosimilar manufacturer, and HLB Inc., the cancer pipeline caused an increase in their stocks 770% in 2019.
– With the assistance of Shinhye Kang