저자: Oktay · 외국인
요약 보기
SK하이닉스 ADR 미국 상장(NASDAQ) 계기로 레버리지 ETF(SKHX 2x 롱, SKHZ -1x 숏) 소개. 상장 전 유럽 3X 상품 인기, ADR 7배 초과청약, 반도체 조정 중에도 수요 확인. HBM·AI 수요로 마진이 높으나 메모리 사이클 리스크 언급. 일일 리밸런싱·복리 효과와 장기 보유 위험 강조, 수수료 0.75% 설명. 발언자는 상품 방향성 예측을 하지 않는다고 명시.
다듬은 글
Hello everyone, this is Julie from Tip Ranks. SK Hynix made headlines last week with one of the largest U.S. listings in recent years, giving American investors easy access to one of the world's leading AI memory chip companies. And after its big debut on NASDAQ, traders can now open both long and short positions with the new ETF.
So, today I'm with Oktay from Leverage Shares. He will explain what these new leveraged ETFs are , how they work, who they are for, and what risks investors should be aware of . So, Oktay, thank you very much for joining me again. Thanks for inviting me, Julie. Of course. Now, for our viewers who may not be familiar with SK Hynix, could you start by explaining why this company has become such an important player in the AI ecosystem?
Yes, of course. As you mentioned, and I think this is a pretty funny point: many of those watching us may not have even heard of SK Hynix until recently, even though their chips are probably in their pockets right now . It is one of the few companies in the world that produces such memory chips. This is essentially the part of the computer that stores data.
So memory suddenly became a bottleneck for all this, I would say, AI development. Even a company like Nvidia can build the fastest processor on earth, but it's completely useless if data isn't getting to it fast enough. And SK Hynix is creating specialized memory that solves this problem. But the bigger story, in my opinion, is not about technology.
In fact, it is a stock or at least a local listing in Korea. They have grown by over 200% since the beginning of the year, and at one point the company even briefly surpassed Samsung, becoming what appears to be the most valuable company in Korea. A little background on how important this is. If you combine SK Hynix and Samsung , they make up 50 to 55%, essentially half, of the KOSPI, which is Korea's benchmark index.
And if you add in the leveraged ETFs that have already been launched in Korea and Hong Kong, over 70% of all trading in the Korean market is focused on just two names. That's how central this whole company has become. Yes, these are huge figures. Now they have just listed on NASDAQ through an ADR offering worth about $28 billion .
So why did Leverage Shares decide that it was time to create products based on this ? Yes. So, we already saw the demand firsthand a few weeks ago in Europe, even before the US listing took place. We launched the 3X SK product and it was one of our most popular launches. This happened, I would say, instantly, and it gave us a clear understanding of investor confidence.
Even before American or global investors even had access to the ADR itself. But if you look at what the ADR confirmed, it was oversubscribed seven times, and all of this is happening during a general sell-off in semiconductor stocks . It's been a tough week in Korea, but people are still lining up .
And when you see that kind of pent-up demand, our view is pretty simple. Traders want and deserve tools from day one in both directions. Once again, we are not in the business of predicting stock prices. We don't know whether they will continue to grow or whether a rollback will begin. We simply provide the market with the opportunity to express its confidence in any direction, whether bullish or bearish.
Our US affiliate , Leverage Shares by Themes, lists a 2x long product called SKHX on the CBOE exchange, as well as a short product—SKHZ. And it will happen on Tuesday. This will be just a few days after the ADR starts trading. As we mentioned, much of the interest in SK Hynix is related to their high-bandwidth memory (HBM), which powers most of Nvidia's AI GPUs.
To what extent is this investment theme a bet on AI infrastructure, and to what extent is it a bet on the memory market cycle? Good question. Honestly, it's both . This tug-of- war between these two ideas is, in fact, the essence of this action. I mean, the company makes profits with margins that are simply incredible for a hardware business .
Its capacity for the year is sold out before the beginning of the year, and customers are literally paying for memory for years in advance. And I don't think we've ever seen anything like this in history. This, in fact, is the story of AI infrastructure. But the memory industry has its own history— maybe not in the US, but in Asia it's known by heart.
The industry has experienced very serious crashes once a decade for the past 30 years. SK itself was actually born during one of these crashes . And there is a certain irony here: the crash of 2022 and probably 2023 is what created the current boom. Then everyone was cutting back on production. Nobody was ramping up the capacity , and then the demand for AI came along, and you were left empty-handed.
Optimists say the industry has truly changed, while pessimists argue that things are different this time. And starting Tuesday, both sides can finally, you know, back up their arguments with dollars on the CBOE exchange. This is somewhat unique— seeing an individual stock ETF tied to a recently listed foreign ADR.
We don't see this every day. So what made SKH stand out among other ADR listings? Yes. I think with most IPOs, you're asked to believe in a story about the future. This is a certain promise that they hope will come true. So this is a completely different situation. We are looking at a 40- year-old company with trillion-dollar capital that already has real tangible profits.
Another thing I would add is that it is of great importance to our activities. This is how this stock is already trading domestically. As I said, SKH and Samsung dominate the Korean market to such an extent that it is difficult to overstate this. And leveraged products have become huge. When I say “huge,” I mean the Hong Kong-based one has grown to about $16 billion in assets under management.
This in itself is the world's largest leveraged product per individual share. This is not some sleepy stock getting listed in the US . We're talking about a promotion that people have been wanting to access for months, maybe longer. And it is one of the most actively traded names on the planet. So, global investors will finally have access to one of the names that have become the foundation of this AI development.
We'll see how it all works out. Certainly. Now that we've talked about leveraged stocks , let's move on to the products themselves. You run SKHX and SKHZ. Can you explain the main purpose of each fund? Of course. I'll try to explain it more simply. The two tickers you mentioned are launched by our subsidiary in the US.
SKHX is a 2x long that aims to provide double the daily price change of the SKH ADR. Let's say the stock rose 1% today— the fund aims to rise 2%, and if the stock fell 1%, the ETF should fall about 2%. If you look at SKHZ, a single short leverage product, you will see essentially a mirror image of what the underlying asset is doing.
So, it will target minus one from the daily movement. So the ETF will rise if the stock falls, and vice versa. They will be listed on Tuesday. And, of course, they can be traded like any other stock or ETF that investors are used to. You don't need a margin account . You won't have to deal with the complexity of options.
And unlike margin trading, you cannot lose more than you invest. So no one will get a margin call through an ETF. And the one thing I think people keep missing, and what I like to emphasize the most, is the word “daily,” because both funds, like many credit ETFs, are revalued daily. And this word serves an important role because if we delve into the details, we will take a closer look at what “daily” means and how long-term retention can work for you or against you.
Perfectly. Yes, that just brings us to my next questions. One of them is real-world scenarios for using credit ETFs and what investors need to know about short-term holding versus long-term implications. Of course. The honest answer is that they are designed for people who have a view on stocks for the coming week.
So, not for the coming months, not for the coming years. So if you are a trader who believes that the first phase of US trading will be turbulent in one direction or another , you can determine the size of the trade with clear risk. Or, on the other hand, if you want to get in shape before a famous event.
For example, we have Heinix reporting at the end of the month, or certain index decisions that have yet to be made, and of course, capital expenditure reports from major technology companies at the end of this month. So, you can play on the long side of the credit or even take a short position or hedge a position you already have.
Therefore, they are not suitable for those who do not want to check their portfolio every day. I'll say this quite bluntly. If you plan to buy something and not follow through with it until the end of the year, a tool with daily leverage recalculation probably won't work for you. Yes, this is definitely not an investment option where you can invest money and forget about it, right?
Um, can you explain in more detail what daily rebalancing is and what it looks like? And, you know, if someone were to hold it longer, what might that interest accrual effect be ? Yes, of course. You know, there is a lot of material about this on the Internet, of course, on our websites, both European and American, but the most important thing I want to convey to people is that even two days of trading in opposite directions can start to work against you.
So I want to give a very simple example. Let's say a stock is trading at $100 and it drops 10% on the first day. So it will be worth 90. The next day, if it goes up 11%, it will be roughly zero. That is, it will return to almost the original price. You will find yourself back at the 100 mark. You have effectively come full circle, and the stock price has barely changed.
If you look at a double leveraged instrument, on the first day, because the stock fell 10%, the double leveraged ETF would fall 20%. So you get down to 80. And then if it goes up 22%, that takes you to about 98. So over the cumulative two-day period, the stock has changed virtually nothing in price, but the fund has lost 2%.
I wouldn't call it a disadvantage. It's just the mechanism and structure of how these products work. So when you talk about a volatile stock, volatile markets can cause you losses, and the market can go against you pretty quickly . And if history has taught us anything, it's that SK Hynix is now one of the most volatile large-cap stocks in the world.
So obviously you need to watch this accrual effect very closely. But on the other hand, the opposite is also true. If you have a smooth, stable trend that may occur immediately or take time to develop. The accrual effect can actually more than double your total income. So it's really one of those tools that you have to monitor every day because, again, a few bad days can cost you dearly , and it can take a strong recovery to get back to where you started.
Now I want to focus on SKHC in more detail because, unlike many inverse products, this one only targets daily performance with a coefficient of minus one, not minus two, as we often see. Why was this particular choice made? I would say probably for two main reasons. First, it's a kind of compound interest effect that we mentioned earlier.
So this " minus" actually gets much worse if you add leverage. This is especially true for short positions in volatile stocks. And a “minus two ” for such assets can lead to quick losses, even if your bearish forecast ultimately turns out to be correct. Therefore, we believe that "minus one" is a version that allows you to hold a position for longer than a day or two.
And secondly, the mathematics of hedging is much simpler. Let's say you own stocks or are worried about some event. "Minus One" actually provides you with one-to- one compensation on a daily basis. No guesswork. You don't need to do any additional calculations to figure out what leverage to use on the inverse side for the perfect hedge.
Perfectly. Another issue I want to discuss is commissions. Both of these products have an expense ratio of 0.75, which is well below the average for many leveraged ETFs and inverse ETFs on individual stocks. Why are you able to offer such a lower expense structure and how important is the impact of fees for a fund designed to be held for only a day or so?
In the ETF space, we have seen a trend where costs have been coming down for many years, and many issuers are now offering similar products. We believe that this structure is becoming a commodity to some extent , and we really care about management fees because it is a signal to the end investor. The commission is one of the few guaranteed numbers in the product, as the direction is to some extent the rate, the volatility is the rate, and the expense ratio is fixed.
Therefore, our view is that it should be as low as the structure allows for a particular issuer. We can do this because we manage a large family of such products within a shared infrastructure. We have economies of scale, and also, philosophically, we believe that these tools deserve a fair price. In Europe, we have the lowest management fees, and in the US, I believe, our subsidiary offers conditions that are about 40% better than the average in this category.
This is what we are proud of, and, in fact, what we have been focused on since day one. Perfectly. And what do you think is the biggest mistake or misconception investors make when using credit or inverse ETFs? Oh, yes. Everything is simple here. It's the same thing. This is treating these daily credit products as buy-and-hold ETFs .
People see, say , 2x, and they take it like, "Oh, I'm going to get double the return on the stock, no matter how long I hold it." In fact , this is again a doubling of daily profitability. After the first day, the compounding effect begins, and things can go completely wrong . The second point is a bit more subtle, because people often get fixated on direction and forget about volatility, which carries its own risks.
You can guess the direction of a stock correctly and still lose simply because the underlying asset was moving too volatile. I would add a third point— determining position size. If the product has double leverage, then half the position gives you the same exposure . So many take full leverage and double their risk without even realizing it.
So I'll say this: these products themselves are not dangerous, but if you use them without a plan, it can be really dangerous. You must know the entry point. You must know the exit point. You should know the relative size of the position and its weight in your portfolio. And you should understand why you are opening this position right now.
And, of course, nothing I say today is a recommendation. So the best solution for an investor who doesn't fully understand how these products work would be to go to the website, study the educational materials, and, as boring as it may sound, read the prospectus, because you need to know what you're buying.
Absolutely. This is sound advice. Finally , your final thoughts. What do you think viewers should watch for in the context of XKH Highix as trading on the NASDAQ ramps up over the next few weeks? Of course. Of course. We all saw this excitement on the eve of the ADR listing itself. Um, but one of the most discussed topics this week was the premium at which American stocks can trade above Korean stocks, because we have historical precedents .
Er, TSMC's ADRs have been trading at a premium to their main listing for many years. Some banks believe the same thing could happen here, as the Korean discount has been around for a long time. The second thing I will personally pay close attention to is trading volumes. Sure, ADRs will start trading on Friday, but when credit ETFs hit the market on Tuesday, there will be a lot of movement both up and down.
I'm curious to see where the lion's share of the flows will go: will there be more interest in leveraged growth products or inverse products, because this is real-time information about investor confidence . Thirdly, this will not happen immediately, but closer to the end of the month. At the end of July, we are waiting for reports from major technology companies.
So, if you factor in company margins, capacity expansion, and this " supercycle," the price will ultimately depend on the hyperscalers' spending on AI, because I don't think this AI story is over until we see a reduction in capital spending. It's going to be an exciting few weeks. There are many things to keep an eye on.
Ekt, thank you so much for joining me again today. Thank you very much, Julie. Thank you for inviting me. Of course, for all our viewers: if you want to learn more about these new credit ETFs, you can go to their website. We'll add a link in the description below. Let us know if you are participating in this IPO and how you plan to trade SK Hynix shares. We always appreciate your feedback. Thank you very much .
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