Tech sell-off widens as South Korea index plunges

46 pointsposted 4 hours ago
by JumpCrisscross
(ft.com)

18 Comments

Fordec

2 hours ago

Isn't this just a response to the Friday drop which happened around 5 AM Saturday South Korea time, well after their Friday bell?

kijin

an hour ago

Yeah, Korea is on one of the earliest time zones among the major markets: UTC+9, the same time zone as Japan, and just behind Australia. So on Mondays we're one of the first to react to anything that happened over the weekend. This reaction tends to be rather violent. Not to mention the country is going through quite a political turmoil right now...

jnakano89

2 hours ago

KOSPI isn't really a country index, it's more like a concentrated chip/HBM ETF in disguise. Samsung Electronics + SK Hynix alone are roughly 30-40% of the index by market cap, and both move on the same AI-capex thesis as Nvidia/TSMC. So it seems to be the same trade pulling back expressed through a country index that's levered to it.

dmix

3 hours ago

Is this one of those situations where it spiked rapidly and now it’s going back down slightly? Or is it a real drop?

tqi

2 hours ago

I wonder how the proposal for 24x5 trading would affect how international selloffs like this ripple through US markets.

JumpCrisscross

2 hours ago

Just look at e minis. They trade Sunday to Friday.

cmiles8

2 hours ago

There’s some early signs of the wheels starting to come off the bus of the “irrational exuberance” that’s been fueling the AI bubble.

Still early days but a lot of folks positioning to protect themselves from the blast radius which is what is driving market volatility.

Talk in many circles and back rooms with the ultra-wealthy has shifted rapidly from “how do I get in on this AI action” to “how do I protect myself from collateral damage when this thing blows up.”

taurath

2 hours ago

YTD Kospi is +173%, after the sell-off, compared to +10% for the Nasdaq. Not exactly... worrying territory there.

But yeah, I'm sorry this whole circular financing bubble with AI should crash. As someone who's in community with people outside tech, things are pretty fucking dire and a correction in asset prices would probably be better long term.

JumpCrisscross

2 hours ago

> people outside tech, things are pretty fucking dire

Isn’t the jobs recession particular to tech [1]? (Well, and agriculture.)

[1] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t14.htm

queenkjuul

2 hours ago

It's pretty awful outside tech. I know a lot of people struggling to find work, and those that have jobs are struggling to keep up with their bills. Nobody's wages are keeping up with costs.

JumpCrisscross

2 hours ago

Where are you geographically? The data indicate this varies wildly, with the West Coast seeing pain and the rest of the country seeing stability or even tightness [1].

[1] https://www.bls.gov/charts/state-employment-and-unemployment...

hedora

2 hours ago

That data is just unemployment. It doesn’t address real wages.

Out here in California, I see headlines like “inflation hits 3.8%”, which seems right until I realize they mean YoY and not monthly, seasonally adjusted.

I know the Trump administration fired a bunch of economists for putting out honest numbers in 2025, so I trust the anecdotes and consumer sentiment stories over official numbers anyway.

I’d love to see third party CPI and inflation numbers, preferably by zipcode or at least state.

yongjik

2 hours ago

Eh looks like it already recovered about half of the plunge? KOSPI fell from 8,048 to 7,477, but now it's back to 7,807.

redwood

3 hours ago

Remember: don't panic and hopefully you're not leveraged

rvz

2 hours ago

This is a correction for ants and is nothing compared to what will happen when the AI bubble collapses.

wewewedxfgdf

2 hours ago

Nice time to buy. Pick up all that juicy coin when it bounces back.

There's plenty of steam left in the AI boom yet.