Published 24 days ago • loading... • Updated 21 days ago
World shares are mixed, while South Korea’s Kospi sinks nearly 11% on heavy selling of chipmakers
Foreign investors sold 5 trillion won as chipmaker losses deepened concerns over AI spending and Chinese competition.
South Korea’s benchmark Kospi index suffered its largest single-day drop in five months on Tuesday, plunging 10.84% to close at 6,023.66 after an aggressive sell-off in semiconductor heavyweights triggered automatic trading halts.
The massive market rout was led by the country's two dominant memory-chip makers, with SK Hynix plummeting 14.7% and Samsung Electronics sinking 13.4%, wiping out billions in market value as foreign investors dumped a net 5 trillion won in shares.
Global market sentiment was severely rattled by a technology report indicating that Chinese firm Shanghai Yuliangsheng has broken the Western monopoly by beginning mass production of homegrown deep ultraviolet chipmaking tools.
Investor anxiety was further stoked by fears that the prolonged artificial intelligence boom is turning into a capital expenditure bubble, amplified by a massive 466% trading-debut surge from Chinese rival memory-maker CXMT in Shanghai.
While regional neighbors felt the tech pain—with Tokyo's Nikkei diving 4% and Taiwan dropping over 4%—global markets outside of Asia remained mixed, as early European indexes like the FTSE 100 and DAX managed modest gains of 0.6%.
Fear of the bubble, powerful Chinese models, astronomical expenditures: Suddenly the stock market is no longer running well for AI companies and chip manufacturers. Has the big shift started?