Apple logo at an Apple Store in New York / EPA-Yonhap

Among Korean retail investors who have invested in the seven major U.S. tech stocks, those who invested in Apple have shown the highest performance in terms of returns and proportion of profitable investors.

In contrast, investors who purchased Nvidia and Tesla stocks have underperformed.

Kiwoom Securities released its analysis of retail investor customer data Wednesday. It showed that among U.S. tech stocks, Apple and Meta had the highest returns of 51.13 percent and 59.68 percent, respectively, based on their combined average purchase prices as of Friday.

Kiwoom clients' average purchase prices for Apple and Meta shares were $151.53 and $326.47, respectively, compared to their closing prices of $229 and $521.31 on Friday.

The proportion of investors who made profits was 98.9 percent for Apple and 97.7 percent for Meta, indicating that virtually all retail investors who invested in Apple and Meta are seeing gains.

Nvidia and Tesla, which have been among the top U.S. stocks in terms of trading volume and net purchases by Korean investors this year, had relatively lower returns and a lower proportion of profitable investors.

Nvidia investors achieved a 40.35 percent return based on their average purchase price of $85.05, which is modest considering the 148 percent surge in its stock price this year.

Tesla was the only one among the seven stocks to record a loss, with its recent stock price of $214.11 falling below the average purchase price of $217.41.

Nearly 35 percent of Nvidia investors and 48.9 percent of Tesla investors experienced losses.