Actor Park Jeong-su [Newsis]
Actor Park Jeong-su [Newsis]

Actor Park Jeong-su has opened up about a painful stock investment experience, expressing regret over a missed opportunity with Samsung Electronics shares.

Park appeared Wednesday on a video published to her YouTube channel "You Can't Stop Jeong-su," sitting down with financial expert John Lee to discuss investing. Lee is a former chief executive of Meritz Asset Management.

Park recalled her past foray into Samsung Electronics shares. "I went broke investing in stocks back then," she said. "I told myself I would never touch stocks again."

"It's embarrassing to admit, but about four years ago I bought several thousand shares of Samsung Electronics at around 80,000 won (about $53) per share," she said. "Then the share price dropped to the 50,000-won range and just stayed there — between 50,000 and 60,000 won — for two or three years."

She said Samsung Electronics had been her largest holding and that she had resolved to sell once she broke even. "I ultimately sold, and after I did, the share price climbed to 80,000, 90,000, then 100,000 won," she said. After holding the shares for three to four years, she walked away with only 5 million won, she said, adding that she had missed a chance to make hundreds of millions of won.

In response, Lee said the reason many people fail at stock investing is that they try to time the price. "Stocks are not about price — they are about investing in time," he said.

"There are still many people losing money in stocks, but you cannot try to predict the share price," Lee said. "If you could wait three years, you should be able to wait four. Ultimately, it was a failure to invest in time."

He also said it is important to judge whether a stock is worth waiting for, and warned against South Korea's heavy reliance on real estate. "In Korea, if someone has 100 in assets, there is a tendency to put 80 into real estate — that is extremely risky," he said. "The very notion that real estate is the only investment is simply wrong."

Park then said she had always believed earning money through labor was the normal path and that making money from stocks was difficult, and asked whether someone like her should invest at all. Lee said assets come in two forms — the body and money — and that as people age, there are limits to how much income the body alone can generate.

Closing the conversation, Lee invoked the power of compound interest. "People are told to start investing in their 20s, but they don't listen until they are in their 60s," he said. "If you had invested 500,000 won a month, it would have grown into a substantial sum. So stop spending money on leisure. Financial illiteracy has a price."


bbo@heraldcorp.com