KOSPI falls 5.14% as SK Hynix drops 10% after Nasdaq debut. Foreign net selling hits $690 million. Sidecar halt triggered for first time since August.
Alpha Score of 49 reflects weak overall profile with strong momentum, poor value, moderate quality. Based on 3 of 4 signals – score is capped at 90 until remaining data ingests.
South Korean shares fell more than 5% Monday, the KOSPI hitting its lowest since May 20 and triggering a sidecar trading halt as investors sold chipmakers on doubts about the AI cycle's staying power.
The benchmark dropped 384 points, or 5.14%, to 7,091.57 by mid-morning. It fell as much as 6.13% before the exchange halted algorithm trading. Foreign investors were net sellers of 1.04 trillion won, or about $690 million.
SK Hynix led the decline, losing 10.32%. The stock had surged 12.8% in its Nasdaq debut Friday, a high-profile U.S. listing that briefly lifted the sector. That pop drew profit-taking almost immediately.
"Despite a successful U.S. listing for SK Hynix, worries about the memory chip cycle peaking have not been resolved," said Han Ji-young, an analyst at Kiwoom Securities.
Samsung Electronics, the other major memory maker, fell 6.14%. The two stocks account for roughly a third of the KOSPI's weighting.
The selloff was broad but not uniform. Battery maker LG Energy Solution rose 2.61%. Hyundai Motor and Kia Corp each gained about 0.2%. POSCO Holdings added 1.59%. Samsung BioLogics climbed 2.44%. Of 912 traded issues, 346 advanced and 543 declined.
The won weakened 0.47% to 1,505.6 per dollar. The benchmark 10-year Korean treasury yield rose 5.1 basis points to 4.275%.
The sidecar mechanism, which halts program trading for five minutes when the KOSPI futures fall more than 5% from the previous close, kicked in shortly after the open. It was the first such trigger since August last year.
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