Korea Investment Management said on the 23rd that it is recommending four exchange-traded funds for the Chuseok holiday, reframing hongdongbaekseo — the traditional rule for arranging food on an ancestral memorial table, with red dishes to the east and white to the west — as a modern asset allocation strategy. The lineup spans artificial intelligence chip stocks that drove this year's market, an active fund focused on shareholder returns, and a U.S. benchmark index fund and a stock-bond blended product for long-term retirement investing.
For "hong," the character for red that signals a rally, the firm picked the ACE AI Semiconductor TOP3+ ETF. According to the Korea Exchange, the fund returned 131.20% year to date and 232.00% over the past year as of the previous day, ranking first among all ACE ETFs excluding leveraged products. Concentrated bets on leading stocks with core high-bandwidth memory technology also lifted net assets nearly eightfold, to 1.1778 trillion won from 133.6 billion won at the start of the year.
For the active category, the firm swapped the character for east with a homonym meaning "to move," selecting the ACE Life Asset Shareholder Value Active ETF. The fund has outperformed its benchmark by 77.31 percentage points year to date, the best showing among all active ETFs in Korea. The firm said the fund generated excess returns in a volatile market by holding quality value stocks with room to improve governance and expand shareholder returns.
For "baek," playing on a homonym for the number 100 rather than the character for white, the firm chose its flagship index product, the ACE U.S. Nasdaq 100 ETF. Retail investors have bought a net 503.6 billion won of the fund year to date, the most of any product in the firm's lineup. Its cumulative return since listing is 221.72%, with steady demand for regular long-term contributions centered on retirement accounts.
For "seo," the character for west representing quality U.S. assets, the firm selected the ACE U.S. S&P 500 U.S. Treasury Mixed 50 Active ETF. The stock-bond blended fund spreads investments across U.S. equities and Treasuries and can fill the full 30% "safe asset" requirement in defined contribution and individual retirement pension accounts. "Just as the dishes on a memorial table must be balanced, managing personal assets comes down to harmonious allocation that accounts for long-term growth," said Nam Yong-soo, head of the ETF division at Korea Investment Management. "We hope this holiday becomes an occasion for long-term investment in future growth, with a mix of AI chips that have delivered proven results, active products aiming to beat the index, and U.S. benchmark index and blended bond products that serve as a solid pillar of retirement accounts."
