// retail leverage monitor
Retail Leverage
Margin financing, sidelined cash and forced liquidations across the US, Korea and China stock markets, from official daily and monthly statistics.
Leverage Index22.0Healthy
0-100 · higher = less healthyComposite of trailing 10-year percentiles: R2 deviation from its 1-year mean (28%), 3-month margin growth (22%), margin growth minus KOSPI return over 1 year (22%), R2 level (18%), forced-liquidation stress (10%). Backtested 1998-2026: the 2007 and 2021 manias read 75+.
Margin Loan Balance
$23.04B
+1.86% vs prev day
R2 · Margin / Deposits
30.27%
10y percentile 13%
Investor Deposits
$76.11B
-1.15% vs prev day
Forced Liquidation
$6.76M
2026-08-20
Margin balance vs leverage ratio
Daily forced liquidation
Backtest: known tops and bottoms
The live formula, recomputed over full history (2003-2026, data through 2026-07), checked against major market tops, bottoms and the full sample. Readings are informative at the extremes; this is a fragility gauge, not a timing signal.
Rank corr vs fwd 12m return
-0.167
Avg fwd 12m when reading < 25
+27.7%
Avg fwd 12m when reading > 75
-2.6%
| Market top | Max decline after | Type | Reading at top | Peak prior 6m | First 75+ warning |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2002-04 | -45% | Leverage-driven | 85.9 | 87.1 | ~11mo before |
| 2007-10 | -54% | Leverage-driven | 79.1 | 99.9 | ~18mo before |
| 2011-05 | -26% | Leverage-driven | 61.1 | 72.1 | -- |
| 2018-01 | -21% | Leverage-driven | 68.4 | 85.8 | ~2mo before |
| 2021-07 | -31% | Leverage-driven | 82.4 | 91.5 | ~11mo before |
| 2026-06 | -25% | Non-leverage | 34.5 | 65.9 | -- |
Readings at major bottoms: 2003-03 → 28.6 · 2008-10 → 37.2 · 2020-03 → 24.7 · 2022-09 → 38.6
- The signal runs early: first 75+ warnings led tops by 2-18 months, and markets often kept rising in between.
- Roughly one in four high-reading episodes was not followed by a major drawdown.
- By design it stays silent on non-leverage declines and exogenous shocks; liquidation stress is tracked separately.
- Small sample: only a handful of full cycles per market, and weights were chosen coarsely to limit overfitting.
Source: KOFIA financial investment statistics · dailyConverted to USD at USD/KRW = 1,384 (ECB reference rate)Data as of 2026-08-20Public market statistics. Not investment advice.