South Korean retail investors, known for their aggressive trading style, are ramping up exposure to Chinese artificial intelligence-related stocks, even as their home market ranks among the world’s top performers.
Data from SEIBro, a portal operated by the Korea Securities Depository, showed that South Korean retail investors bought US$507 million worth of Hong Kong-listed shares and US$154 million of mainland-listed shares between January 2 and Monday.
The data showed that total purchases had already matched the combined levels seen in January and February 2025, when the launch of Chinese AI start-up DeepSeek’s R1 model sparked a global rally in China’s technology sector.
This year’s buying has been heavily concentrated in AI and semiconductor names.
In Hong Kong, the most actively bought stock on a net basis was start-up MiniMax AI, which attracted US$21 million from Korean retail investors since it debuted in January. Montage Technology, a Shanghai-based semiconductor company that debuted in February, followed with US$19 million in net purchases.
On mainland exchanges, semiconductor equipment maker Naura Technology was the top pick, drawing US$3.5 million in net buying.
“I’m betting shares in this Chinese version of OpenAI will skyrocket,” said Roy Lee, a South Korean retail investor who recently bought MiniMax and holds more than 20 technology stocks globally.
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