Korean media: South Korean securities firms plan to tighten the rules for investing in single-stock leveraged ETFs, and the minimum margin requirement may be raised by five times.

According to the report from the Korea JoongAng Daily, the Korean securities industry has agreed to tighten the investor protection requirements for single stock leveraged ETFs. The Korea Financial Investment Association convened an emergency meeting with the CEOs of major securities firms on Tuesday to assess the market situation of leveraged ETFs tracking Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, and discuss countermeasures. The participating institutions generally agreed to increase the minimum margin requirement to curb excessive use of leverage by individual investors. One proposal under discussion is to raise the minimum margin threshold from 10 million Korean won to 50 million Korean won. The institutions also agreed to provide more targeted risk alerts based on investor age and portfolio situation, and enhance investor education to help investors better understand the structure and risks of these products. In addition, the industry agreed to more evenly distribute rebalancing and hedging trades across the entire trading session to reduce market impact from concentrated buying and selling before the market close.