Korean Retail Investors Scooped Up Intel, Micron, and Alphabet Over Two Weeks in May — TOP 50 Net-Buy Analysis

Korean retail investors (known as "Seohak-gaemi") poured approximately $3 billion (₩4.41 trillion) into U.S. stocks during May 1–13, 2026, according to Korea Securities Depository data. The TOP 50 net-buy list reveals exactly where they are placing their bets right now.

Intel at 16.77% — Driven by the Terafab Thesis

Intel (INTC) tops the list at 16.77%, a wide margin over second place. The direct catalyst was Intel's confirmation as a 14A-process foundry partner in the Terafab project led by Musk, SpaceX, and Tesla. Buying continued even as Intel's stock had already surged 114% in April alone, up 166% year-to-date. The Granit Shares 2X Long INTC ETF appearing at 27th place shows the depth of conviction behind the Intel theme.

Semiconductors Dominate — Half of TOP 10 in Memory and Chips

No. 2 Micron (11.45%), No. 4 Roundhill Memory ETF (6.38%), No. 5 AMD (5.16%), No. 7 SanDisk (3.40%), No. 10 Direxion Semiconductor Bear 3X ETF (2.97%), and No. 11 iShares Semiconductor ETF (2.96%) — Korean investors are tracking AI data center demand straight into HBM, NAND, and GPU names.

SanDisk's roughly 4,000% surge dragged both the TRADR 2X Long SanDisk ETF (16th) and TRADR 2X Short SanDisk ETF (48th) into the top 50 simultaneously — a signal that high volatility is drawing two-way leveraged trading in the same name.

Circle (CRCL) at No. 8 — First Week on the Market

Circle Internet (3.25%) stands out. The collection period runs May 1–13, and Circle listed on Nasdaq in early May. It entered the Korean net-buy top 10 in its very first trading week. The ProShares Ultra CRCL ETF appeared at 41st. Expectations around U.S. stablecoin regulation clarity and dollar payment infrastructure upside are clearly priced in.

Alphabet at No. 3 — Betting "This Is Not an AI Bubble"

Alphabet Class A at No. 3 (9.40%) plus Class C at No. 36 (0.85%) puts the combined weight above 10%. After surging 43% over six months and closing in on Nvidia's market cap, Alphabet attracted a large Korean inflow. Larry Fink's "this is the opposite of a bubble" comments and reports of Berkshire buying the stock both played a role.

Contrarian and Niche Bets

• No. 40: DEF Daily T2X Short RKLB ETF — fade the move after Rocket Lab surged 42% in two days
• No. 34 AST SpaceMobile (0.97%) and No. 32 TRADR 2X Long ASTS ETF (1.00%) — satellite broadband infrastructure play
• No. 50: Xanadu Quantum Technologies (0.54%) — quantum computing theme
• No. 17: TeraWulf (1.68%) — Bitcoin mining and AI data center power infrastructure

Non-Semiconductor Inflows Worth Noting

No. 12 Bloom Energy (2.56%), No. 19 Modine Manufacturing (1.42%), No. 29 GE Vernova (1.07%), No. 28 Powell Industries (1.18%) — power and energy infrastructure names ranked right behind semiconductors. The market is pricing in the reality that AI data centers need electricity as much as they need GPUs. Arista Networks (No. 43, 0.66%) fits the same data center networking theme.

McDonald's (No. 46, 0.62%) and Pfizer (No. 49, 0.57%) represent defensive allocations — a small but real diversification out of the AI concentration trade into dividend-paying defensive names.