Emerging markets like South Korea, where young investors use extreme leverage (5x margin on trading apps), will see supercharged boom-bust cycles that mirror crypto, but this demographic shift is still a long-term tailwind for global equities.

21:17again and return to the market the moment he has enough capital. Had a boy Lee Sun. How a boy. Uh the 24-year-old South Korean university student in Soul briefly turned the 20 million Juan he saved during the mandatory military service into a 15-fold windfall. All by tapping quote a tiny circle button on his trading app that instantly unlocked five times leverage. Violent swings in South Korean stocks triggered a cascade

21:40of forced liquidations by his brokerage, wiping out the gains. Within weeks, his account had fallen below his invest uh his initial investment, leaving him under such strain that he said, "I literally could not breathe." But I'm sticking to marginal loans, Lee said from his studio apartment, barely larger than a parking space next to an empty habiki whiskey and unboxed electric fan gifted by his brokerage after he

22:03qualified as a VIP [laughter] client. >> This is really good. >> What? Um, okay. Lee said, "Since stocks are volatile assets, that volatility, if it moves upward, allows for rapid wealth creation. If I add five times leverage, I can build wealth five times faster than the others." Um, he added when asked why he would take on more. Okay. Uh, anyway, this guy's he's not the only person

22:29doing this. >> No. Uh, legend. I love how they had to like get like put him down by talking about how big his apartment was. [laughter] >> Yeah. >> Come on. Low blow Reuters. >> But there was times leverage. >> There was there was a data point going around a couple of weeks ago that there was 500,000 South Korean accounts that were liquidated. What I do you remember? Do

22:51you remember what the number was? >> I don't remember the number, but it's uh they had to put some curbs on this stuff in South Korea in terms of the leveraged ETFs. And it sounds to me this feels like crypto to me where the crypto accounts just get taken out because the leverage is so high. But I can't believe that they're allowing five times leverage for an account that size

23:10for an account any just by hitting a that's crazy, right? >> Why not six times that Why stop there? these as these other countries learn about the stock market and there some of these a lot of these other country I talked about this with Josh today actually where a lot of these other countries don't have nearly the ownership we have or like the institutional knowledge of the stock

23:30market because there's been just more time here to gain that knowledge I think they're going to supercharge these cycles kind of like crypto the crypto cycles all happen faster right the boom and the winter and the boom and the winter I think that's going to happen with a lot of these individual countries as they as their young people learn the stock market and I think eventually it's

23:47going to be a good thing for them as long as they don't get totally blown out and and are broke and have to declare bankruptcy. >> Uh I don't know if I share your optimism with Elise somehow. >> No. Okay. Well, the fact that he's going back for more leverage, obviously that's not a great sign, but I do think that these other countries because all the barriers to entry have been knocked down