South Korea's Kospi closes 10.8% lower as AI chip… — Indexa Brief

Wednesday, 29 July 2026

Samsung and SK Hynix each fell more than 13%; Nvidia's 5% slide on Monday triggered the regional rout

South Korea's Kospi closes 10.8% lower as AI chip sell-off sweeps Asia

Samsung and SK Hynix each fell more than 13%; Nvidia's 5% slide on Monday triggered the regional rout

• The global AI chip sell-off intensified on Tuesday, with South Korea's Kospi becoming the epicentre of a regional rout driven by investor doubts over AI spending returns and rising Chinese chip competition.
• The Kospi closed 10.8% lower after trading was halted for 20 minutes when the index fell 8%, with Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix each declining more than 13%; Japan's Nikkei 225 closed almost 4% lower.
• Nvidia fell 5% in New York on Monday after the Wall Street Journal reported it is in talks to provide around $250bn for an OpenAI data-centre project, ceding its position as the world's most valuable listed company to Apple.
• Investor concerns centred on the scale of borrowing among AI companies to fund data-centre expansion and the growing threat of Chinese chip competition, with US tech stocks poised to extend losses as Asian markets closed.
• SK Hynix's US-listed shares dropped to well below their $149 offer price, having debuted on Nasdaq on 9 July in a record-breaking listing.
• Jane Sydenham of Rathbones said Korean investors' heavy use of debt financing "exaggerates the movements when we get a correction like this."

1 min read · 13 hours ago

SK Hynix Q2 net profit jumps 13-fold as AI memory demand holds

Company secured multiyear contracts with roughly 10 customers, extending a streak of record quarterly results

• SK Hynix posted a 13-fold rise in second-quarter net profit, confirming that AI-driven memory demand has not softened entering the second half of 2026.
• The South Korean chipmaker, the world's second-largest memory producer, said it won multiyear supply contracts with approximately 10 customers.
• The result extends what the Wall Street Journal described as a streak of record quarterly prints, suggesting pricing power in high-bandwidth memory has been sustained rather than peaking.
• Investors will watch whether rival Samsung Electronics can close the technology gap in HBM, and whether contract terms from the newly announced deals anchor pricing visibility into 2027.

1 min read · 5 hours ago

Morgan Stanley launches Ether and Solana ETPs after Bitcoin fund hits $381m

New products include staking rewards, extending a digital asset strategy that began with Bitcoin earlier in 2026.

• Morgan Stanley's Bitcoin fund surpassing $381 million in assets provided the commercial basis for the firm to extend its crypto ETP range to Ether and Solana.
• The two new exchange-traded products offer staking rewards, a feature absent from the earlier Bitcoin fund and a meaningful differentiator for yield-seeking institutional allocators.
• Both products are positioned as low-cost, signalling Morgan Stanley is competing on fee structure as well as brand in a market where margin compression is accelerating.
• The expansion marks Morgan Stanley moving from a single-asset crypto offering to a multi-asset digital product shelf within a single calendar year.
• Traditional wealth management rivals will face pressure to match the Ether and Solana coverage, particularly given the staking yield component that pure spot ETFs from other issuers do not provide.

1 min read · 9 hours ago

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This is an archived issue of the Indexa Morning Markets Brief.

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