Svmuu News: The South Korean stock market fell sharply as chip stocks faced another round of selling, highlighting their high sensitivity to fluctuations in global AI investment sentiment.South Korea’s KOSPI index fell more than 8% during Friday’s trading session, erasing all of the previous trading day’s gains and triggering the market’s circuit breaker mechanism, with shares of Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix both dropping about 9%.Foreign investors sold 2.5 trillion won (approximately $1.6 billion) worth of KOSPI stocks during early trading.
The sharp decline marked a rapid reversal of Thursday’s rally, when Micron’s optimistic earnings outlook and news of SK Hynix’s plan to list in the U.S. had briefly boosted market optimism regarding the sustainability of the AI investment boom.However, market sentiment quickly deteriorated as investors digested news that Apple was raising prices due to a memory chip shortage and that OpenAI might postpone its IPO until next year.
Fabien Yip, a market analyst at IG International, said, “If even Apple—one of the world’s largest component buyers—cannot absorb rising costs, it will certainly raise questions about demand elasticity and the sustainability of memory chip profit margins.” He added that OpenAI’s IPO delay also reflects how tech stocks are vulnerable to fluctuations in retail investor enthusiasm. (Jin Shi)