The session and the levels reached
The Seoul stock exchange closed Friday’s session sharply lower, with the benchmark KOSPI down 206.92 points, or 3.48%, to 5,730.74, after falling as low as 5,599.42. According to The Korea Herald, the market had opened down nearly three percentage points and then extended losses, to the point that the Korea Exchange activated a sell-side “sidecar” shortly after 10 a.m. The mechanism is triggered when the KOSPI 200 futures index loses at least 5% for one continuous minute.
Trading was subdued, with 212.76 million shares traded for a value of 19.27 trillion won, about $14.44 billion. Decliners clearly outnumbered advancers, 655 to 232. On flows, foreign investors net sold 1.62 trillion won, while institutions and individuals bought 742.55 billion and 620.97 billion won, respectively.
The link to Wall Street and the hardest-hit stocks
The correction in Seoul fits within the losses recorded the previous night on Wall Street, where fears over high artificial intelligence-related valuations cooled sentiment. Alphabet, Google’s parent company, lost more than 12% despite third-quarter revenue rising 25% year on year to $127.58 billion: the figure came in below market expectations, fueling doubts about returns on massive investments in the sector. The Nasdaq Composite fell 1.38% and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index 1.4%, with repercussions for South Korean chipmakers.
Among the market heavyweights, Samsung Electronics lost 3.02% to 225,000 won and SK hynix fell 7.08% to 1.42 million won. In autos, Hyundai Motor declined 3.59% to 282,000 won after cutting its annual sales target and investment plans, while Kia fell 11.73% to 95,600 won after third-quarter operating profit came in below expectations. Hanwha Aerospace lost 8.42% to 696,000 won, hit by quarterly results below forecasts due to delays in deliveries of K9 self-propelled howitzers to Poland.
Kang Jin-hyuk, an analyst at Samsung Securities, explained that investors sold AI-linked stocks after a series of disappointing quarterly results from major tech companies and chipmakers, and that concerns about the sustainability of AI-driven growth further weighed on sentiment.
The won and the points still to be clarified
In contrast to equities, the Korean won strengthened against the dollar: at 15:30 it was trading at 1,334.3 won per dollar, up 5.2 won from the previous close. The material does not indicate the reasons for this currency move, which therefore remains to be verified.
The picture that emerges is one of a session dominated by portfolio rebalancing in technology stocks, with the activation of the sidecar signaling the intensity of selling. It remains to be ascertained, based only on the available material, whether the decline reflects a lasting repricing of expectations for AI investments or a correction tied to individual earnings seasons: the source reports data for a single day and statements from one analyst, without providing indications on the subsequent outlook.
