South Korean parents are opening brokerage accounts for their babies. Not college funds. Not savings bonds. Stock portfolios for creatures who can't control their own necks.
The logic goes like this: start them early, let compound interest work its magic, and maybe Junior won't have to live in a shipping container when he's thirty. Except the parents are the ones picking the stocks. The baby contributes nothing. The baby doesn't even know what money is. The baby thinks the ceiling fan is God.
These aren't custodial accounts gathering dust in an index fund either. Mom and Dad are actively trading. They're reading analyst reports. They're timing the market. They're doing everything retail traders do, except now they've got a dependent who literally sh*ts himself as their motivation to beat the S&P.
The surge in infant investment accounts apparently stems from South Korean parents wanting to give their kids a financial head start. A noble goal. Really warms the heart. Nothing says generational wealth transfer like putting a six-month-old into semiconductor stocks and hoping Samsung doesn't pull a Boeing.
Here's what's actually happening: parents are using their baby's name to open a second account so they can trade more without feeling bad about it. The kid's Social Security number becomes a tax-advantaged gambling vehicle. Little Min-Jun isn't building wealth. He's providing his parents with another brokerage login.
The best part? These babies will grow up and inherit portfolios they had no part in creating. They'll either get a windfall they didn't earn or a pile of losses they couldn't prevent. Either way, they'll have no idea what Dad was thinking when he bought into that metaverse stock in 2025.
Imagine being Korean, finally old enough to check your account, and discovering your parents put you in F*cking Dogecoin when you were three weeks old.
Leave a Comment