Super 301 lapsed in 1990, so the thing everyone is naming is not the thing that is happening. After the Supreme Court struck down the IEEPA tariffs in February, the whole program was rebuilt on Section 301 — Korea is at 12.5 percent, and the excess-capacity tariff proposal is due this month.
I picked individual stocks for fifteen years and lost money doing it. In 2024 I stopped and started buying the whole index instead. Here is the arithmetic on what a 1% fee costs over 30 years — and what the data says about people who keep trying.
A coworker asked how long his money takes to double and I could not answer without a spreadsheet. The Rule of 72 does it in three seconds, it is accurate to within a month between 6 and 9 percent, and it exposes the uncomfortable part: 54 percent of a 40-year outcome arrives in the final decade.
Korea’s Value-Up index beat the KOSPI by 8.8 points this spring — then the index gave nearly all of it back in seven weeks. Here’s the math behind that swing, and why my dividend ETFs still hold zero Korean stocks despite the rally.
Gold just pushed back above $4,400 an ounce. My dividend-focused portfolio still owns none of it — and the reason isn’t the price, it’s the yield. Here’s the arithmetic, plus how Korea and the US tax gold very differently.
My National Pension adjusts for inflation every year. My personal pension accounts don’t. I ran the math on what a fixed $1,000 payment is actually worth after 20 years — and it explains exactly why I never stop buying the index.
A 30-year government bond fund has sat in my pension account for two years and I never asked what actually moves it. The Fed held rates steady on July 29 — and long-term bonds moved anyway. Duration is the one number that explains why.
A coworker sent me an 11% dividend yield. The funds I actually own pay 2-3%. Here is why the smaller number is the one I keep buying — and the year-13 crossover that explains it.
In July the Korean market had its third-worst month on record and, eleven days later, its best single day ever. Leveraged ETF holders lost in both directions. So did a $45 billion AI hedge fund holding the same stock — and the mechanism was identical.
My balance fell in July while nothing I own fell. Tracing why led me through three things I had wrong: that rates move stocks in one direction, that the Fed sets “the” interest rate, and that textbook theory explains currencies. It does not.