Bad week for ‘the ants’ as ripple effects of Korean crash spread out across Asia

It was a bad week for “the ants,” as South Korea’s army of retail traders are known colloquially. 1.2 million of them were clobbered with margin calls. That’s more than 3% of the country’s adult population, illustrating the feverish extent of stock market speculation and the danger of leverage.

By Jules Rimmer