In Another Wild Day for South Korean Stocks, Market Surges 18 Percent
These days, South Korea’s stock market can only be described as wild.
The country’s benchmark KOSPI rose 18 percent on Friday, capping a volatile week marked by huge price swings that triggered mandatory pauses in trading on Tuesday and Wednesday to give the market a breather during sharp sell-offs.
The Seoul stock market has become the epicenter of both investment enthusiasm and anxiety related to artificial intelligence, making trading on it extremely volatile. The shifting sentiment has been focused on two leading chip suppliers to the A.I. data center building boom, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix. And they account for more than half the value of the local market.
Shares of Samsung soared 27 percent on Friday, while SK Hynix climbed 30 percent.
Before Friday’s rally, the South Korean market had tumbled on growing concerns that the enormous spending — expected to top $1 trillion over this year and the next — to build out A.I. systems had been overdone. As the prime beneficiaries of that investment, Samsung and SK Hynix were at risk if major technology companies decided to splurge less on A.I. infrastructure.
For people still searching for rational explanations, the KOSPI’s rise on Friday came on the heels of comments from Microsoft and Amazon that they plan to continue spending more on building computing capacity for A.I. despite already staggering outlays. In addition, new regulatory measures from the South Korean government aimed at easing market volatility kicked in Friday, lifting hopes that better days lay ahead for the KOSPI, which had fallen about 25 percent in the last month.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/31/business/korea-stocks-chips-kospi.html
In Another Wild Day for South Korean Stocks, Market Surges 18 Percent
These days, South Korea’s stock market can only be described as wild.
The country’s benchmark KOSPI rose 18 percent on Friday, capping a volatile week marked by huge price swings that triggered mandatory pauses in trading on Tuesday and Wednesday to give the market a breather during sharp sell-offs.
The Seoul stock market has become the epicenter of both investment enthusiasm and anxiety related to artificial intelligence, making trading on it extremely volatile. The shifting sentiment has been focused on two leading chip suppliers to the A.I. data center building boom, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix. And they account for more than half the value of the local market.
Shares of Samsung soared 27 percent on Friday, while SK Hynix climbed 30 percent.
Before Friday’s rally, the South Korean market had tumbled on growing concerns that the enormous spending — expected to top $1 trillion over this year and the next — to build out A.I. systems had been overdone. As the prime beneficiaries of that investment, Samsung and SK Hynix were at risk if major technology companies decided to splurge less on A.I. infrastructure.
For people still searching for rational explanations, the KOSPI’s rise on Friday came on the heels of comments from Microsoft and Amazon that they plan to continue spending more on building computing capacity for A.I. despite already staggering outlays. In addition, new regulatory measures from the South Korean government aimed at easing market volatility kicked in Friday, lifting hopes that better days lay ahead for the KOSPI, which had fallen about 25 percent in the last month.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/31/business/korea-stocks-chips-kospi.html