About

Won and Cents is a personal blog about markets and portfolio decisions, written in English by an individual investor based in the Seoul area, South Korea.

The posts here are working notes: currency exposure, tax, costs, and the practical friction of investing globally from a Korean brokerage account. Expect tables and plain prose rather than charts and hot takes. If you are new, start here.

How I invest

• I have been investing since 2020. I started during COVID.
• I buy every month on a fixed schedule: half into an S&P 500 ETF, half into a Nasdaq 100 ETF. I do not change the plan because of the news.
• I hold US stocks directly through a Korean brokerage account. I earn, spend, and pay tax in won, so every return I write about has an exchange rate attached.
• I have also bought US Treasuries through a Korean broker. I have an ISA, but I do not use it.
• I have filed my own Korean capital gains tax on foreign stocks, by hand.
• I live with my husband and pay monthly rent. Stocks are our main investment.

I do not write about my job, and I do not claim any credentials. What I have is the view from here: how Korean news, Korean rules, and the won feel to someone who invests with them every month.

Sources

Many of my sources are Korean news sites. Links to Korean-language pages are marked (in Korean). Market data comes from public sources, and Korean interest rates from the Bank of Korea's Economic Statistics System (ECOS).

What this is not

This is not a newsletter, a signal service, or a recommendation engine. Nothing here is personalized advice. See the disclaimer for the full statement.

Contact

There are no comments on the site by design. Questions, corrections, and stories from your own investing are welcome at [email protected]. I can't give personalized advice, but I read everything. If you want to follow along, the RSS feed is the way.