Number of the Day
K-Pop’s Stock Market Mania, by the Numbers
The agency behind Korean boy band BTS went public in South Korea’s biggest IPO in three years
58.4 trillion South Korean won or $50.3 billion: That’s how much retail investors deposited, at more than $100,000 each, for a chance to win just two shares in a lottery tied to the IPO of Big Hit, the parent company of K-pop group BTS, according to reporting in the Financial Times and Yahoo! News.
In the last few years, K-pop has grown into a bonafide international phenomenon, and the boy band BTS is arguably the genre’s biggest act. Big Hit Entertainment, the agency behind BTS, went public on October 15 in what would be South Korea’s largest initial public offering in three years. The IPO was heavily oversubscribed by retail and institutional investors, thanks largely to excitement from BTS stans, causing its share price to jump by more than 130% soon after it debuted on the market.
However, all that excitement was short-lived, as institutional investors quickly began selling off their shares, causing the stock to plummet over the next few days. Savvier investors might have spotted weaknesses that K-pop fans didn’t: While Big Hit Entertainment is behind the world’s most popular K-pop group, it is also entirely…
