South Korea's deleveraging isn't complete yet, so I sold off SK Hynix after the rebound. Blue V mutual follows, I’ll definitely follow back On the morning of August 3, 2026, the Korea Financial Investment Association released the latest margin financing data as of July 30. South Korea's margin financing balance stands at 32.1531 trillion KRW. Compared to the peak of 38.6328 trillion KRW on June 24, the balance has decreased by 6.4797 trillion KRW, a drop of about 16.8%. This indicates deleveraging has occurred, but it doesn’t mean leverage has been fully cleared. The Bank of Korea disclosed that the margin financing balance at the end of 2025 was 27.3 trillion KRW. The current 32.1531 trillion KRW is still 4.8531 trillion KRW higher than the year-end figure, an increase of about 17.8%. Using the 2025 year-end figure as a baseline, margin financing had increased by 11.3328 trillion KRW during this cycle; as of July 30, only 6.4797 trillion KRW of that has been reduced. In other words, about 57.2% of the new financing has exited, while 42.8% remains in the market. Traditional margin financing isn’t the full picture of leverage in South Korea’s stock market. The Korea Financial Services Commission disclosed that the total market value of 16 single-stock leveraged ETFs and ETNs rose from 4.4 trillion KRW at their launch on May 27 to 11.9 trillion KRW as of July 15, an increase of about 170.5%. While this data cannot be directly added to the margin financing balance or represent the latest scale as of the end of July, it does show that some risks have shifted to embedded leverage products. Starting July 31, South Korea raised the basic margin requirement for these products to 30 million KRW in cash. Since the latest margin financing data only goes up to July 30, there isn’t enough data yet to confirm whether the new regulations have further reduced leverage. The safest conclusion is: South Korea’s margin financing has clearly fallen from its peak but remains higher than the 2025 year-end level; about 40% of the new financing hasn’t exited yet, and the latest scale of product leverage and the regulatory impact are still unconfirmed. At this stage, we can only say deleveraging is underway, but it’s not yet complete. #KOSPI #KoreaStocks #MarginDebt #Deleveraging #한국증시 #신용융자