Kospi Rallies 3.3 Percent a Day After a Steep Fall as Chip Giants Still Lead
The Kospi closed Wednesday at 5,735.66, up 182.92 points, or 3.29 percent, from the previous day. According to the Korea Exchange, the index recovered much of the ground it lost in the previous day’s drop of more than 3 percent.
The strength was there from the start. The index opened 2.05 percent higher and at one point in the morning extended its gains into the upper 4 percent range. At 10:51 a.m., Kospi 200 futures had stayed up more than 5 percent long enough to trigger a buy-side sidecar, a measure that suspends program buy orders for five minutes. It was the first such trigger since Aug. 20.
Semiconductors were at the center of the rebound. Samsung Electronics finished up 5.67 percent at 223,500 won, and SK hynix rose 5.81 percent to 1,294,000 won. Both stocks climbed into the 7 to 8 percent range during the session before giving back part of their gains. SK Corp. surged 12.62 percent, and semiconductor and power equipment names such as SK Square and LS Electric followed.
Foreign investors were the buyers. According to Yonhap Infomax, foreigners who had sold heavily the day before returned with 660.3 billion won in net purchases. Retail investors, by contrast, sold a net 1.1319 trillion won, using the rebound as a chance to take profits, and institutions were also small net sellers.
The first clue to the recovery in sentiment came overnight from the United States. Super Micro Computer, an artificial intelligence server maker, put its preliminary quarterly revenue at between $18.5 billion and $19.5 billion, well above the market expectation of about $15.2 billion. Its gross margin outlook also came in higher than expected. SpaceX posted its first quarterly profit since its listing and said demand for AI computing power far exceeds supply. The results were read as a sign that the enormous sums being spent on AI are starting to come back as actual revenue.
Domestic data added support. According to the Korea Customs Service, semiconductor exports from Oct. 1 to Oct. 20 reached $27.5 billion, up 222.5 percent from the same period a year earlier.
The index number and the feel of the market, however, were two different things. The Kospi rose 3.3 percent, yet only 372 stocks advanced while 487 declined. Even among the largest names by market value, LG Energy Solution, Hyundai Motor and KB Financial fell. The rebound was concentrated in a handful of big semiconductor stocks rather than spread across the market.
The way gains faded in the afternoon also showed where the market’s nerves lie. When news arrived that NextDC, an Australian data center operator, had cut its outlook citing delays in power grid expansion and that its shares had fallen more than 40 percent in local trading, Samsung Electronics and SK hynix also slipped from their intraday highs. The concern came back that the speed of data center construction is ultimately set by power and land.
Elice, an AI infrastructure company in its second day on the Kosdaq market, compressed the mood into a single stock. Elice had plunged on its debut the day before, closing 32 percent below its offering price, but on Wednesday it rose to the daily limit and closed at the upper limit. Bloomberg and Reuters covered the previous day’s plunge as a case study in the debate over how AI companies are valued. Even at the limit-up close, though, the stock remained 11.7 percent below its offering price, leaving investors who received shares in the offering still sitting on paper losses.
Analysts say it is too early to conclude that one day of rebound has changed the trend. Seo Sang-young, an executive director at Mirae Asset Securities, said concerns about funding and returns on investment in the AI infrastructure industry have not fully cleared, so volatility could widen stock by stock.
The roller-coaster pattern continues, with the market falling more than 3 percent one day and rising more than 3 percent the next. Market participants share the view that this is a phase in which the gap is widening between companies with confirmed earnings and those without, more than a phase set by the direction of the index itself.
