Costly mix of trading and home working

SEOUL－Day traders seeking help for gambling addiction have tripled in number in South Korea, as COVID-19 social distancing and working from home has freed up more time for online stock market trading, data shows.

Retail investors, known locally as ants, were a force in a 50 percent stock market surge after a virus-induced sell-off in March.

From then through May, however, the number of those seeking help for trading-related addictive behavior reached 214, data from the Korea Center on Gambling Problems showed. The growth rate eclipsed the overall 16 percent rise in calls seeking help.

The trend is a worrying sign of things to come should social distancing practices such as working from home become the norm, experts said, as isolated individuals have even fewer mechanisms such as peer support to check addictive behavior.

Compulsive stock trading also lacks the social stigma that may act as a deterrent toward traditional forms of gambling, even though the stimulation behind both is similar, they said.

South Korea has not enforced any virus-busting lockdown measures, even during the height of the outbreak in the country over February and March. Nevertheless, people and businesses by and large have followed government guidelines and refrained from social gatherings and instituted work-from-home arrangements.

Huge losses

One such individual was a 35-year-old bank employee surnamed Lee. He has been trading shares online for over a year since hearing of a friend who made a windfall through frequently buying and selling stocks based on rumor and speculation.

Though Lee has seen some success, once making a profit of several hundred thousand dollars in a single trade, the increased trading time afforded by working from home culminated last month in his losing 1.2 billion won ($1 million) over five days.

On the insistence of his wife, he said, he subsequently sought help from a gambling addiction counselor.

"We tend to see an influx of people seeking help after a huge market dive," said Kim Yeon-su, treatment manager at the Korea Center on Gambling Problems help center in Seoul. "It happened with bitcoin and now it's happening with stocks."

Active trading accounts－the bulk of which belong to retail investors－rose by 2.8 million from mid-January through mid-July, versus 1.6 million in the same period last year, financial association data showed.

The surge was reflected in the July listing of SK Biopharmaceuticals Co Ltd, when each share on offer for retail investors attracted 323 prospective buyers whose down-payments totaled 31 trillion won. The successful buyers saw their investment more than quintuple in four days.

Investor message boards on South Korea's dominant internet search portal see high traffic throughout trading hours with posts such as "I want to become a king ant" and "I was robbed today as usual", plus discussion of obscure stocks and preferred shares.

Mental health experts said trading can become high-stakes gambling, with little to hold back the trader when they can trade easily online at home and often on credit.

"Some of these people are buying, selling, buying, selling...To become a gambler, you need immediate stimulation to the brain. Invest in stable things, wait three months－they don't do this," said psychiatrist Shin Young-chul at the Kangbuk Samsung Hospital.

Agencies via Xinhua