{"id":879586,"date":"2026-10-12T11:00:19","date_gmt":"2026-10-12T11:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/879586\/"},"modified":"2026-10-12T11:00:19","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T11:00:19","slug":"the-worlds-hottest-ai-stock-market-has-gone-cold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/879586\/","title":{"rendered":"The World’s Hottest AI Stock Market Has Gone Cold"},"content":{"rendered":"

South Korea’s stock market<\/a> has gone from the world’s hottest to its coldest in just a few months.<\/p>\n

The Kospi, the world’s best-performing major stock benchmark in the first half of 2026, has since fallen about 24%, making it the worst-performing major market in the second half. It’s still more than 50% higher this year.<\/p>\n

The AI trade<\/a> isn’t losing its appeal. But investors are increasingly looking beyond South Korea’s memory-chip giants to companies with broader exposure to the AI hardware boom.<\/p>\n

In July, analysts at GlobalData.TS Lombard pointed out that much of the earnings growth at Korean memory-chip makers came from higher memory-chip prices. By contrast, TSMC and Japanese chip-equipment makers relied more on advanced manufacturing and process expertise, giving them more durable growth prospects, they added.<\/p>\n

Taiwan’s Taiex has climbed about 7% in the second half of the year, taking its year-to-date gains to about 70% as investors broaden their bets across the AI hardware supply chain.<\/p>\n

South Korea’s rally was driven largely by Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, whose soaring memory-chip profits made them among the biggest winners of the AI boom. Together, the companies account for more than half of the Kospi, leaving the market unusually dependent on a single segment of the semiconductor industry.<\/p>\n

Even blockbuster earnings are no longer enough to excite investors. Last Thursday, Samsung forecast a nearly ninefold increase in quarterly operating profit, yet its shares have fallen for two straight trading sessions.<\/p>\n

The reversal followed months of extraordinary volatility. The Kospi plunged 22% in July, its worst month since the 2008 financial crisis, before rebounding 18% on the month’s final trading day for its biggest one-day gain on record. The swings triggered multiple market-wide circuit breakers as leveraged bets<\/a> on chip stocks amplified the moves.<\/p>\n

Young South Koreans<\/a> flooded social media with memes and dark humor about their battered portfolios, while regulators tightened rules on leveraged single-stock exchange-traded funds after concerns the products had fueled speculation.<\/p>\n

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Trading has cooled sharply. Turnover has dropped 70% from its late-May peak, while foreign investors have continued pulling money from Korean equities.<\/p>\n

The next phase of the AI trade<\/p>\n

The shift didn’t happen overnight.<\/p>\n

Even before Korea’s selloff, investors were debating whether the next phase of the AI boom would continue rewarding memory-chip makers or broaden to companies with exposure across the semiconductor supply chain.<\/p>\n

Taiwan appears to be benefiting from that shift. Its market offers exposure across AI infrastructure, from advanced chip manufacturing and packaging to servers and networking equipment.<\/p>\n

That includes TSMC as well as companies involved in advanced packaging, servers, networking equipment, and other AI infrastructure.<\/p>\n

The Taiex outperformed the Kospi by more than 23 percentage points in the third quarter, as Taiwan’s benchmark gained nearly 4% while South Korea’s plunged more than 19%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South Korea’s stock market has gone from the world’s hottest to its coldest in just a few months.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":879587,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[65902,369757,24176,47133,369756,28,3426,2995,7345,299961,19633,112,8208,23924,1866,3998,4477],"class_list":["post-879586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-markets","tag-advanced-manufacturing","tag-ai-hardware-boom","tag-ai-infrastructure","tag-bet","tag-broad-exposure","tag-business","tag-company","tag-investor","tag-july","tag-kospi","tag-major-market","tag-markets","tag-month","tag-packaging","tag-south-korea","tag-taiwan","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=879586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879586\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/879587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=879586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=879586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=879586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}