<Anchor>



This is a corner full of useful information for your life.

It's a friendly economic time.

Reporter Kim Hye-min is also on the 13th today.

Reporter Kim, the stock price fell a little yesterday.

There may be a number of reasons, but there are many stories about short selling.

But what is short selling?

I wasn't sure.



<Reporter>



Yes, you see it often in the news these days.

Short selling today, I will explain this to make it easier to understand.

Short selling literally means "selling missing stocks."



When the stock price is likely to fall, you first borrow the stock from a brokerage company and sell it, then if the stock price falls, then you can buy it and pay it back.



For example, if you borrow and sell 10 shares of a 100 won stock of Company A, 1,000 won will come first.

If this stock drops to 50 won per share after some time, then you can buy 10 shares for 500 won.



At this time, if I repay the 10 shares I borrowed from the securities company, I will have a profit of 500 won.

Short selling betting on a decline in stock prices is legal.

It is also active abroad.



However, it is currently banned in Korea, and as the stock price plummeted due to Corona 19 in March last year, the government banned short selling of all stocks for six months.

Since then, it has been extended once more.

Short selling is also expected to resume from March 16, two months later.



<anchor>



So this is what I am doing overseas, and it is a legal system to place bets on falling stocks.

But why do our individual investors oppose this?



<Reporter>



Short selling means betting money on a decline in stock prices.

The Kospi has been playing a lot recently, and if you release short selling again, you can go back to the old stock market stagnation.



Moreover, in Korea, it is a structure that individuals cannot do even if they want to sell short.

There are very limited ways individuals can invest in short selling.

There are also fewer stock types.



In addition, there are only 6 securities companies that provide short selling services.

So, in 2019, domestic short selling transactions only accounted for 0.1% of individuals.

The remaining 99.9% was traded between institutions and foreigners.



There was also a petition for the Blue House citizens to ban short selling forever. I just saw it before and so far 99,000 people have agreed.



<Anchor>



So in the end, it's because individual investors can't sell short.

Institutions and foreigners can do a lot, but individual investors can't, so they object. So what about overseas?

Is this the same way abroad?



<Reporter>



Looking at close Japan alone, individuals already account for more than 20% of short selling.

This is because it is a structure that makes it easier for individuals to invest in short selling than in Korea.



Short selling has been common in the United States for a long time, but these days, the number of US stocks has risen a lot, so it is said that short selling investment has increased.



You've seen a lot of movie'Big Short' in Korea.

The real protagonist of the film, Dr. Michael Burry, expected the US housing market to collapse in 2008.

They made more than 800 billion won by investing in short selling.



However, since last month, Dr. Burri started short selling Tesla's stock price as abnormal.

It also warned of a bubble in Tesla's stock price recently.

Short selling also has a net function of suppressing the bubble in the stock price.



So, unlike in Korea, Britain, Japan and Germany, including the United States, did not prohibit short selling.

Other countries in Europe and Asia, which temporarily blocked short selling, now allow most of them again.



<Anchor>



So, I think I know roughly what it is like to sell short.

Then, I am curious about what will happen to this short sale in the future. What is the government going to do?

You mean to extend this?

Or are you saying you will be resurrected?



<Reporter>



This is a very, very funny situation right now, not only individual investors over the past few days.

In the political world, voices like "Let's extend the ban on short selling" continued to come out.



But yesterday, the Financial Services Commission sent a text message to reporters saying, "We plan to finish improving the system with the aim of resuming short selling in March."



Reporters must have asked the Financial Services Commission.

"Is short selling resume this time?" Then, a senior official at the Financial Services Commission explained, "There is no decision on whether to resume."



So I guessed that the ban on short selling would be extended once more, but late last night, the Financial Services Commission nailed it back to "the first text message was the official position of the financial authorities."



In the end, the Financial Services Commission will improve the system and resume short selling in March.

Every move by the Financial Services Commission is causing the stock market to fluctuate. Last night's announcement by the Financial Services Commission is also expected to have a major impact on the stock market today.



But the variables remain.

In the future, the flow of stock prices, the re-election in April, and collective actions of individual investors are expected to have an impact.



It is not yet possible to guess what conclusions will be drawn, but as the stock market in Korea has a lot of weight, we must go in a direction that helps to grow healthy.