🚨 BLACK TUESDAY IN SOUTH KOREA 🇰🇷
South Korea’s ruling party has proposed taxing unrealized gains on stocks and real estate — meaning investors could be taxed on profits they haven’t even realized yet.
📉 Stocks up? Pay tax.
📉 Haven’t sold? Still pay tax.
Markets reacted violently as investors fear a direct hit to wealth creation and capital formation.
The proposal comes after the Korean market surged nearly 95% over the past year, driven largely by retail participation and leverage.
History offers a warning:
🇳🇱 The Netherlands passed a similar unrealized gains tax in February 2026, only to backtrack days later after massive public backlash and criticism from business leaders.
Taxing paper gains could force selling, reduce investment incentives, and undermine market confidence.
Today’s selloff shows investors are taking that risk seriously.
Earlier in this decade investors made the elementary mistake of ignoring very high valuations and focusing only on the business strengths and writing books on how valuations do not matter and u should hold stocks for ever. We made a contemporaneous presentation on why this and BAAP in general does not work ( see on youtube or search in my tweet history).
Now investors are making the exact opposite mistake of ignoring business uncertainty and focusing only on valuations.
Buying during uncertainty is recommended when uncertainty is market related without threatening the underlying business- interest rates, market flows, politics etc. Here the issue is of business uncertainty and threat of disruption etc so all uncertainty is not of the same quality.
@DinshawIrani - our current India CEO and IT analyt of Helios from 2005 to 2023 - has been brilliant in understanding and highlighting these differences.
If you can stomach this churn, volatile market, macro negative news flow, world is coming to end scenario. So many cos hav done capex nearing end now. 50% will come in FY27, full impact will show in FY28. Which could lead to 2x profits in FY28 vs what they did in FY26. any names?
BREAKING 🚨🚨
🇮🇷 Strait of Hormuz just lit up! Ships are suddenly surging through using Iran’s traffic lanes over the last 24 hours.
Source: Reuters, Marine Traffic
@grok verify
It is now looking like a clear mania phase in South Korea
Investors above 50 now hold nearly 62% of margin loans at Korea’s top 10 brokerages
Among investors in their 60s, margin debt has doubled in just one year
People are cashing out insurance policies & savings deposits to chase higher returns in stocks
Policy surrender payouts at the top 3 life insurers reached 4.9 trillion won in Q1, around $3.3 Bn🔼16% YoY
History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes🙏
@mujifren@sahil_vi Pessimism just sounds smarter and more plausible than optimism. Tell someone that everything will be great and they’re likely to either shrug you off or offer a skeptical eye. Tell someone they’re in danger and you have their undivided attention.
Morgan Housel.
2012 Reloading.
Reforms will pick up momentum.
We will make steady progress.
If the Iran crisis resolves and crude prices correct, we will start moving towards a better place.
The tide will turn decisively.
The question is only When and not If.
Everyone is suddenly bearish because INR is weakening 📉🇮🇳
But what if this is actually the START of a massive profit cycle for Indian manufacturing? 👀🔥
Most people only see panic.
Smart money watches second-order effects.
A thread 🧵👇
This can actually change your view 🤩
We are now in this stage of the bear market in India. Predictability of human nature is the only constant in investing. This type of behavior is observed near the final capitulation phase of a prolonged bear market.
Source: Journal entry dated 20.07.2019