2014–2016 oil crash and the boxed-in KOSPI

Oil lost three quarters of its price, and the KOSPI went sideways in a narrow range for years. A flat market still costs money, through low deposit rates and decaying leveraged products.

From $100 a barrel to $26

WTI crude was trading around $100 a barrel and peaked at $108 in June 2014. US shale output flooded the market, OPEC refused to cut production, and the price slid to around $26 by February 2016, a quarter of the peak in a year and a half. Oil producers' budgets came under strain and energy company defaults weighed on markets. For importing countries, cheaper oil worked like a tax cut.

The China shock and MERS

In 2015 China wobbled. The Shanghai market fell 30% in a month from June, and in August a surprise yuan devaluation led to a global sell-off known as "Black Monday". The KOSPI fell to around 1,830 that day. At home, the MERS outbreak kept consumers at home and hit domestic spending. There was no single big crash, just a steady run of bad news.

Boxpi: three years sideways

For most of this period the KOSPI was stuck in a narrow box between 1,900 and 2,100. That is when investors started calling it "Boxpi". Every rally met a wave of fund redemptions and every dip drew bargain hunters, so the index went nowhere. Over the same stretch the US Nasdaq passed its dot-com peak for the first time in 15 years, and talk of "escaping the Korean market" grew louder. Investors began to see that which market you owned mattered as much as which stock. Deposit rates fell into the 1% range, so waiting in cash paid little.