From the US there are four routes to Asian stocks: US-listed ADRs, a global broker with access to Asian exchanges, country ETFs, or 24/7 perpetual futures on Hyperliquid, which Based connects you to. Which one works depends on the company, because some of the most important names barely reach US investors at all.
TSMC makes the chips. Samsung and SK Hynix make the memory. Toyota makes the cars. Alibaba and Tencent run Chinese tech. If your portfolio ends at US listings, you're missing a large slice of the global economy.
Route one: ADRs
An American Depositary Receipt is a US-listed wrapper around a foreign share. A bank holds the real shares abroad and issues receipts that trade in dollars on a US exchange. The big ones work well: TSM, SONY and BABA all trade on the NYSE with deep liquidity, normal spreads and standard brokerage support.
The catch is coverage. An ADR only helps if a liquid one exists, and for many important companies it doesn't. SK Hynix has only a thin, unsponsored over-the-counter ADR that most brokers handle grudgingly if at all. Samsung has no US-listed ADR available to regular American investors. The companies at the center of the AI memory boom are exactly the ones the ADR system serves worst.
Route two: a global broker
Interactive Brokers offers direct access to Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore and other Asian exchanges. You get real local shares in real local markets.
You also inherit everything local. You trade Tokyo during Tokyo hours, which is the middle of the night in the US. You deal with local currencies, exchange-by-exchange permissions and market data subscriptions. It suits committed international investors. It's heavy for someone who wants to trade one Korean stock.
Route three: ETFs
Country and region funds like EWY for Korea or EWJ for Japan trade on US exchanges like any stock. One ticker, instant diversification, nothing foreign to set up.
Diversification is also the drawback. If you have a view on one company, a fund dilutes it with dozens of others. A big SK Hynix move becomes a modest EWY move. ETFs are fine for owning a country and blunt for trading a company.
Route four: trade them through Based
Through Based you can trade Hyperliquid markets on major Asian names: SK Hynix, Samsung, TSMC, Kioxia, SoftBank, Hyundai, Alibaba and more. Every market is quoted in USD and runs 24/7, so it stops mattering that Seoul's trading day falls at your 3am.
These are perpetual futures tracking each stock's price on Hyperliquid, not the local shares. You get price exposure, long or short, without dividends or votes, and with the usual derivative risks: a leveraged position can be liquidated if the price moves far enough against it, and funding fees apply while it's open. Access needs no brokerage account, no bank account, just a self-custodial wallet funded with USDC, so there's no foreign-account paperwork either.
Timing is the other advantage. Asian market news breaks in Asian hours, and with a 24/7 market you can act on it live instead of waiting for New York to open and gap. For Korean memory names in particular, that timing gap is often where the move happens. More at the memory stocks hub.
Which route fits
If a liquid ADR exists and you want to own the share, use the ADR. If you want a whole country, an ETF does it in one ticker. If you want a single name like SK Hynix or Samsung, long or short, at any hour, the perp is the most direct option. The perps guide is worth ten minutes before your first trade.