South Korea had an extremely large population of retail investors investing in options and leveraged ETFs, to the point that 3% of the adult population has now been margin-called.
"401(k)" is a class of tax-advantaged account for retirement, theres no one global 401(k). If you are concerned, you can look at your disclosures or ask your provider.
All of this is kind of beside the point though, because the issue was leverage not exposure. In south korea ppl were forced to sell at the low point of the market due to margin calls. For a retirement account, you can just choose to take a disbursement next month or next year (assuming youve managed personal cash flow with sequence of returns risk in mind).
Me too / born in Sydney! A good mental model is that its like super, the kinds of things that super can invest in are equally diverse and it all depends on who you setup with
Systemically i guess thats more a question of 1) is US equities just an AI trade, and 2) how much of all these investment vehicles are just such assets. Regardless of the answers, the nice thing is that unlike debt, there isnt a positive feedback loop here (i.e. margin calls increase volatility)
