Kospi extended its brutal slide on Wednesday, tumbling more than 9 percent and hitting the lowest point since April. This came right after a staggering 10.84 percent drop on Tuesday, marking the steepest single-day fall in nearly five months. Investors kept dumping shares in semiconductor and AI-related firms, dragging the benchmark down further.
SK Hynix led the selloff, falling over 9 percent despite reporting record quarterly revenue and profits. The memory chip giant posted an operating profit of around 60.5 trillion won, a massive 550 percent increase year-over-year, but it still missed analysts’ lofty expectations of about 64 trillion won. Samsung Electronics also dropped more than 8 percent, while LG Innotek and Seoul Semiconductor plunged roughly 15 and 10 percent, respectively. Tuesday’s crash saw SK Hynix and Samsung shares lose nearly 15 percent each, with foreign investors offloading roughly 5 trillion won in South Korean stocks during that session.
The pressure spilled over into other Asian markets where chip stocks took a hit. Japan’s Kioxia shares sank 14 percent and Tokyo Electron lost 5 percent. SoftBank Group, heavily invested in AI through its stake in Arm, dropped close to 8 percent. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company slipped almost 4 percent, and China’s Hang Seng Semiconductor Index fell over 6 percent. US semiconductor giants AMD and Micron also suffered, dropping 8.12 and 8.95 percent respectively. Market jitters revolve around the massive AI infrastructure investments, rising debt to fund data centers, and intensifying competition from Chinese chipmakers. Some analysts view this as a correction rather than a longer-term downturn.
