KOSPI falls 2.44% as chip stocks retreat after U.S. tech selloff
South Korea's KOSPI fell 2.44% Friday morning as investors sold chip shares after U.S. AI and semiconductor losses.
The KOSPI opened 2.36% lower and had shed 135.29 points to 5,398.48 as of 11:20 a.m. in Seoul, according to the report.
The overnight U.S. session ended mixed. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.02%, while the S&P 500 fell 1.21% and the Nasdaq Composite, weighted toward technology, dropped 2.6%. Micron Technology fell 6.26%; Nvidia and Intel declined 4.4% and 8.04%, respectively.
In Seoul, Samsung Electronics fell 3.03% and SK hynix slipped 0.25%. SK hynix pared earlier losses after news that it had decided to suspend plans to list its U.S. subsidiary, Solidigm. SK Square, an AI investment firm and SK hynix’s parent, edged down 0.4% after the news.
Solidigm sits within a multi-layer corporate structure: SK Square is the parent of SK hynix, which owns Solidigm. The structure has raised concerns that a separate listing could deepen the so-called holding company discount, in which a parent trades below the value of its underlying assets, according to the report.
The Korean won was trading at 1,324 per U.S. dollar as of 11:20 a.m., up 2.5 won from the previous stock trading session.