On a South Korean online forum this week, “Muenyu” related how his wife had recently seen her sister with a new designer handbag worth 5m won (£2,480) and asked how she’d afforded it.
“Her husband bought her the bag because she recently made over 1,000pc profit from [holding shares in] SK Hynix and about 50m won from Samsung,” Muenyu wrote, referring to the two largest companies on the South Korean stock exchange.
Muenyu’s sister-in-law wasn’t the only one.
“Black Star” told the same forum that he was a “10-bagger” – someone who’d notched up a tenfold increase in the value of his shares. He boasted: “To celebrate, I took a small profit and recovered my principal.”
Another eager trader replied: “Amazing! Congratulations!! Will the day come when I also become a 10-bagger?
“Now that I’ve achieved my goal of a three-digit return (100pc), let’s go for the 10-bagger too!!!”
South Korea is in the grip of stock market fever.
‘Everyone is talking about stocks’
Old men who meet to play chess in the park are scrolling share prices and swapping tips. Department store workers are deserting the shop floor at 3.30pm and ensconcing themselves in the loos to check the day’s closing prices.
“Everyone, literally everyone, is talking about stocks these days,” Shin, a 32-year-old bank worker, told The Korea Herald this week.
“During lunch with colleagues, we talk about stocks. After work, with friends, we talk about stocks. On weekends, I talk about stocks with my family.”
It’s no mystery that Koreans can think of little else. Their country’s stock market is on a rampaging boom, for which there is almost no historical precedent.
The benchmark Kospi index is up more than 90pc since the start of the year. The market can seesaw 5pc higher or lower on a daily basis but this week hit a record close to 8,500 points.
The Kospi, which was introduced in 1983, took more than 18 years to move from 1,000 to 2,000 points and another 13 years to reach 3,000. The ascent from 4,000 to 7,000, however, took just four months. The run-up to 8,000 needed only a fortnight.
Investment bank JP Morgan predicts that the index is on course to hit 9,000 soon and could even crack 10,000.
Along the way, the Korean stock market’s total capitalisation has overtaken that of France and Britain, making it the world’s eighth-largest.