• Korean cathode maker Ecopro has been the world's best-performing stock in 2023.

• An EV investing frenzy has powered its shares 572% higher.

• Ecopro has even outperformed US semiconductor giant Nvidia, up 229% year-to-date.

The world's best-performing stock of 2023 isn't part of the vaunted "Magnificent Seven" — it's a little-known South Korean cathode maker.

Shares in Ecopro have soared a staggering 572% year-to-date, per data from Refinitiv. Seoul's tech-heavy Kosdaq index is up 27% over the same period.

South Koreans have piled into so-called "theme stocks" like EV battery makers over the past 12 months, in a frenzy that's led to huge spikes in volatility and forced financial watchdogs to crack down on what they see as excessive speculation.

Ecopro's stock price jumped over 1,000% between January and late July. Although it's given up some of those gains since, it's still the best performer in Bloomberg's 2,647-member World Index year-to-date.

The component maker's stratospheric returns in 2024 mean it's even outperformed US semiconductor giant Nvidia, the poster child for this year's AI-fueled rally.

Nvidia, which dominates the market for the graphics processing units (GPUs) that power large language models like GPT-4, has seen its stock price skyrocket 229% year-to-date, lifting its total market capitalization to more than $1.2 trillion. Ecopro was valued at 19.4 trillion South Korean won ($15 billion) as of Thursday's closing bell.

The cathode maker's surging stock price has also made its founder Lee Dong-chae — currently serving a two-year prison sentence for insider trading —  a billionaire this year. His family's total net worth has ballooned from $300 million to $3.6 billion in 2024, according to data from the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

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