Find the ‘Unfairly Traded Stock’!

Since I was in charge of stock market news report, I was often asked to recommend ‘a blue chip stock’. Although I usually recommend stock like Samsung Electronics, the person who hears that doesn’t seem to be satisfied by my advice. The person might have expected to hear something about the unfairly traded stock.

When ‘Unfair trading activities by the KOSDAQ registered companies’ were reported on 7th and 8th, many email messages were sent from the individual stock investigators. Most of the emails entailed the complaining message saying ‘I am a victim of the unfair stock trading’. However, there were also absurd messages like ‘Can you tell me what are those stocks unfairly traded?’

It is reported that the individual stock investors, who suffer serious damage from the stock investment, seek to do unfair trading of stocks. Does this indicate that more individual stock investors become stockjobber? The stock experts advise that an attempt to do an unfair trading out of desperation will only make the situation worse. Unexpectedly, one might succeed. However, participation in unfair stock trading often ends up with feeding those who manipulate the unfair trading.

One unfair trader whom I met during the coverage said that ‘If there was no individual investor who dreamt of one time big success, unfair stock trading was impossible from the beginning’. This means that unfair trading is possible because individual investors seek to find those unfairly traded stocks. If this is the case, it is unreasonable to blame others after the serious loss.

An unfair stock trading watchdog agent from the Korea Stock Exchange worried that unfair trading would grow more aggressively with the recent increase in stock price. The idea that ‘if somebody else is making profit through the unfair trading of stocks, that’s unfair trade, while if I am the one who is making profit, it is an ‘aggressive investment’’ devastates the stock market. This is time to remember that the unfair traders have been targeting individual investors’ ‘get-rich-quick’ mindset.

Park Jeong-Hun sunshade@donga.com