Small retail investors comprise 66% of the market in SK. It's usually single unmarried people who make ridiculously big bets to try and get enough money to buy a house or get married. It's something to be pitied not hated.
From my very shallow understanding of the Korean market it's common to invest in high risk shares because a big win is the only way to afford a nice home. Financial nihilism, risk appetite etc. So it's far from only rich people.
But if an investment doesn't pan out, and your response is "My life's screwed", you couldn't afford the investment either. "high risk" is right in the name -- the win isn't guaranteed.
If you are in the unfortunate position of not being able to afford a nice home, live somewhere less nice and try to build savings so that some day your children can afford a nice home.
Now I'm on very thin ice and just based on youtube videos so if someone from South Korea reads this feel free to correct me.
As I understand it the order of things for men* in SK is 1) housing 2) marriage 3) children
No housing means no wife means no children to afford a nicer home. So, they're incentivised to take big risks.
But I'm going to step out of this minefield now with the hope of someone who actually knows things providing some information. It just seemed like the original comment didn't give enough weight to context.
*Women in SK are as I understand it fighting a whole other battle.
>But if you get caught stealing bread, and your response is "My life's screwed", you couldn't afford the risk either.
>If you are in the unfortunate position of not being able to afford bread, eat something less expensive and try to build savings so that some day your children can afford bread.
See how this works when you conveniently dismiss the effects of severe structural problems in society as evidence of poor financial literacy?
I recognize that there's something I'm severely misunderstanding here. In order to "win big" in the stock market, you generally need to invest big -- i would assume people investing big in the stock market aren't literally homeless; they likely rent some kind of room or apartment. Equivocating it to "stealing bread" seems a little extreme.
If the supply/demand curve of housing is so extremely upside-down that the only way to get ahead of it is gambling, then maybe they shouldn't be increasing the population -- at the risk of sounding a bit heartless, it seems to me like the only real choice is to leave; a peninsula that's locked from the mainland by an enemy like north Korea means that resources must be too scarce for their population.
It's all relative, you seem to think that rich people can't get "as depressed" as poor people but you are genuinely wrong, rich people also commit suicide, money isn't everything and for the most part, people have worked quite hard and smartly to become rich, such a basic take.
PS (ready for the downvotes): A ton of people are not wealthy by choice as well, I don't want to over generalize because this isn't true for all, but a LOT could master a new topic every month by just stopping Instagram for 1 hour a day and instead use that time to study and make money, so what, if they start in the direction of building wealth, suddenly they are assholes?
The notion that poor circumstances somehow justify poor choices is extremely counterproductive, as the context of this thread should make abundantly clear.
Just saying rich people betting and losing is much more funny than poor people making bad financial decision in the hope of maybe living a better life.