ETF/US/SKDD rose by seven points, with trading volume reaching more than double the average, making it a rare high-volume asset among Korean assets that day.

Interestingly, the news flow was almost entirely on the opposite side: contract prices for traditional DRAM and NAND just hit multi-year highs, Moody's upgraded its rating to A3 with a stable outlook, and foreign investors are already closing short positions.

What drove this inverse leveraged product higher wasn't storage industry prosperity, but rather deleveraging across the broader Korean stock market—the forced selling triggered by margin calls doesn't discriminate based on fundamentals; even assets in a price-up cycle get sold off indiscriminately.

Daily-rebalanced inverse products are only friendly during one-way downtrends. Once deleveraging is complete, the drag from rebalancing will eat into returns sooner than any directional bet would.