SK Hynix (000660.KS) 2x ETF Tops TSLL as Global No. 1

TL;DR - The CSOP SK Hynix Daily 2x Leveraged Product has overtaken Direxion's Tesla Bull 2X (TSLL) to become the world's largest single-stock leveraged ETF by assets. - Fund assets reached roughly $5.38 billion (about ₩7.89 trillion) just seven months after its October 2025 Hong Kong listing, per Chosunbiz and Seoul Economic Daily. - Korea's own first single-stock leveraged ETFs, tied to Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, are scheduled to debut on May 22, 2026.

Lead

A Hong Kong-listed leveraged ETF tracking SK Hynix (000660.KS), Korea's largest memory-chip maker after Samsung Electronics, has become the world's biggest single-stock leveraged fund by assets, with about $5.38 billion (₩7.89 trillion) in AUM as of May 7, 2026, according to Chosunbiz and Seoul Economic Daily. The CSOP SK Hynix Daily 2x Leveraged Product (HKEX: 7709) saw its assets under management surpass those of the Direxion Daily TSLA Bull 2X Shares (TSLL), the U.S.-listed Tesla leveraged ETF that had long dominated the category. The milestone arrives just weeks before Korea is set to launch its own first single-stock leveraged ETFs on the same chip duo.

What Happened

According to data from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and CSOP Asset Management cited by Chosunbiz, the CSOP SK Hynix Daily 2x Leveraged Product held about $5.37782 billion in AUM (roughly ₩7.8919 trillion) as of May 7, 2026 (local time), exceeding the AUM of Direxion's TSLL.

The ETF was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in October 2025 — TradingKey cites a listing date of October 16, 2025 — and has been the only globally available leveraged ETF tied to SK Hynix. Chosunbiz reports that the product ranked first by net inflows among global single-stock leveraged and inverse ETFs in the first quarter of 2026.

Return figures vary by reporting window. Chosunbiz cites a cumulative return of about 750% since listing, well above SK Hynix's own share-price gain over the same span. TradingKey, measuring through April 2026, puts the ETF's return at 513% versus a 208% advance in the underlying SK Hynix stock — above the simple 2x mathematical product because of compounding during a sustained uptrend, an effect the fund's daily-reset structure can amplify in trending markets.

A companion product, the CSOP Samsung Electronics 2x leveraged ETF, holds about $1.64782 billion in AUM (around ₩2.4205 trillion), Chosunbiz reports, and has recently entered the upper ranks of global single-stock leveraged and inverse ETFs.

Why It Matters

The ETF's rise is the first concrete signal that global leveraged-fund flows — long anchored to U.S. mega-caps such as Tesla and Nvidia — are being meaningfully redirected toward Korean semiconductor names on the back of the AI memory cycle. Chosunbiz attributes the fund's surge to expanding AI-server capex and rising demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM), citing those drivers as the reason SK Hynix shares hit a fresh intraday record on May 8, 2026. Crucially, the leadership change happened in Hong Kong rather than Seoul, because Korean rules until recently restricted single-stock concentration in domestic ETFs — a structural gap that pushed both foreign and Korean capital offshore in search of leveraged exposure.

Business Impact

Korean retail and institutional capital is visibly part of the flow. The Korea Securities Depository (KSD, Korea's central securities settlement agency) data cited by Chosunbiz shows domestic investors held roughly $172.11 million (about ₩252.8 billion) of the CSOP SK Hynix 2x ETF as of May 6, 2026.

That offshore concentration is about to be challenged at home. Korea's Financial Services Commission (FSC, the country's top financial regulator) approved an amendment to the Capital Markets Act Enforcement Decree that takes effect April 28, 2026, clearing the way for Korea's first single-stock leveraged and inverse ETFs, according to Seoul Economic Daily. Eight asset managers — including Samsung Asset Management, Mirae Asset, Korea Investment Management and KB Asset Management — are preparing products on Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) and SK Hynix, with simultaneous launches targeted for May 22, 2026, per The Korea Herald and Seoul Economic Daily.

Eligibility is tight: a stock must account for at least 10% of benchmark market capitalization and 5% of trading volume over the trailing three months, a bar Seoul Economic Daily reports is currently met only by Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix. Investor-protection guardrails include an additional one-hour advanced training course on top of existing leveraged-product education and a ₩10 million (about $7,300) minimum deposit, per the same outlet. Analyst projections cited by Seoul Economic Daily put expected domestic inflows into the new Samsung and SK Hynix leveraged ETFs at ₩1.7 trillion (about $1.24 billion) under a conservative scenario and ₩5.3 trillion (about $3.87 billion) under an aggressive scenario.

Industry & Historical Context

Single-stock leveraged ETFs are a relatively young product class. They first appeared in the U.S. in 2022, and TSLL — Direxion's 2x Tesla product — quickly became the category bellwether by AUM. Asia-Pacific issuers have been catching up: CSOP launched its SK Hynix 2x product on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in October 2025, the first leveraged ETF anywhere with SK Hynix as its sole underlying. Korea's own market, by contrast, had effectively been closed to such products because of long-standing concentration limits on individual securities within ETFs — limits the FSC's recent enforcement-decree revision is designed to loosen, according to Seoul Economic Daily.

The AI memory backdrop has been a powerful tailwind. SK Hynix is one of the principal suppliers of HBM used in AI accelerators, and Chosunbiz notes the stock set another intraday all-time high on May 8, 2026, the day the leveraged ETF crossed the global No. 1 mark.

What to Watch

• The May 22, 2026, launch of Korea's first domestic single-stock leveraged and inverse ETFs on Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, and how quickly initial AUM tracks against the ₩1.7 trillion–₩5.3 trillion range projected by analysts cited in Seoul Economic Daily.
• Whether Korean retail flows out of the Hong Kong-listed CSOP SK Hynix 2x ETF — which the KSD pegged at about ₩252.8 billion in early May — rotate back home once domestic alternatives list.
• Any further moves by HBM and AI-server demand indicators, given that the leveraged ETF's compounding gains have been driven by a sustained one-way move in SK Hynix shares.

Sources: - Chosunbiz — https://biz.chosun.com/stock/stock_general/2026/05/08/HT4AFLXT7BEGTJMTGSMLUFBQ2A/ - Seoul Economic Daily — https://en.sedaily.com/finance/2026/05/08/sk-hynix-leveraged-etf-tops-global-single-stock-rankings - TradingKey — https://www.tradingkey.com/analysis/stocks/more/261873908-skhynix-etf-dram-mu-tsll-tradingkey - The Korea Herald — https://www.koreaherald.com/article/10722289 - Seoul Economic Daily — https://en.sedaily.com/markets/2026/04/21/korea-to-allow-single-stock-leveraged-etfs-on-samsung-sk

By LineVest Markets Desk — May 9, 2026

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.