As foreigners post heavy net selling on the main board, the KOSPI is plunging more than 3%. Individuals and the national pension funds are net buying but failing to defend the index. In particular, large-cap chip stocks such as Samsung Electronics and SK hynix are tumbling.
U.S. stocks rose overnight as the United States and Iran mentioned a "end of war," but U.S. chip stocks including Micron and SanDisk fell after Google unveiled advanced technology that can sharply cut memory use. The fallout is seen as affecting Korea's stock market as well.
As of 11:30 a.m. on the 23rd, the KOSPI is trading a little over 3% lower than the previous session, around the 5,470 level.
After opening lower, the KOSPI initially held the 5,500-point level, but a flood of foreign selling, centered on large-cap chips, broke that support. As of 11:30 a.m., foreigners are net selling about 2 trillion won on the main board. They are also net sellers in KOSPI 200 futures.
Individuals are net buying more than 1.6 trillion won, and the national pension funds also have a 250 billion won buying edge, but the index is sliding sharply.
The previous day, Google Research unveiled an advanced quantization algorithm, "TurboQuant," that reduces a large language model's (LLM) memory usage by more than sixfold. As memory demand has surged and supply shortages have deepened, it developed a new compression technology to address the issue.
After the technology was released, concerns spread that demand for high bandwidth memory (HBM) and storage could slow. While U.S. stocks mostly rose overnight, Micron and SanDisk fell.
As a result, the electrical and electronics sector is falling sharply on the domestic market. Foreign investors are unloading shares in large volumes. With Samsung Electronics and SK hynix down around 5%, HANMI Semiconductor is also dropping steeply. Semiconductor component stocks are weak as well.
The KOSDAQ, which opened firm and rose early in the session, also turned lower. As of 11:30 a.m., the KOSDAQ is trading around 1.4% down from the previous session at the 1,140-point level.