Yun Seok of Credit Suisse First Boston, an investment bank, thinks that, as a result, stockbrokers profits may be shrinking. Worse, the reliability of those profits has probably also deteriorated. By and large, gambling is still forbidden in Korea. Casinos are allowed only in hotels and are open only to foreigners, at least officially. They will even stay up all night gambling at funerals.
People burned by speculation never come back.
It is the manic day-traders, however, who make up most of the brokers new business. Advertisements stress the reliability and speed of Daishin s trading system. They claim, for instance, that no trade takes more than a second to complete, from the desktop to the stock exchange and back again. Clearly, it is not just the lure of super-cheap trading that has attracted these traders. But now that share prices are falling again, some business has already vanished.