Tech sell-off widens as South Korea index plunges

https://www.ft.com/content/2f0f727b-5315-445c-b8f1-6aa65bd7474c

by JumpCrisscross • 2 months ago

61 23 2 months ago

ft.com

redwood• 2 months ago

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

boilerupnc• 2 months ago

https://archive.ph/f0mzg

dmix• 2 months 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?

JumpCrisscross5• 2 months ago

where it spiked rapidly and now it’s going back down slightly?

An 8% intraday drop is nothing to sneeze at. Though, for what it’s worth, e mini S&P 500 futures traded flat today [1].

[1] https://www.cmegroup.com/markets/equities/sp/e-mini-sandp500...

yongjik• 2 months 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.

taurath• 2 months 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.

JumpCrisscross5• 2 months 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

queenkjuul2• 2 months 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.

dzhiurgis• 2 months ago

Memory shortage forecasted for at least half a decade, likely more. Why should it crash?

ben_w• 2 months ago

Lots of possible stories if you write "and then it crashed" on the last line of a sheet of paper and work backwards.

e.g.

1. US economy becomes lopsided towards AI as per Dutch disease 2. US exports become relatively expensive, imports become relatively cheap, collapsing employment opportunities in general outside making more data centres 3. Nobody in the US except hyperscalers can afford anything 4. Fixed output from people still making consumer RAM not anticipating this 5. Oversupply relative to demand 6. Market price of consumer RAM collapses to shift stock

Of course, the ease of writing backwards is also why, famously, 11 of the last 2 recessions have been predicted. Or whatever the exact quote was.

wewewedxfgdf• 2 months 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.

rvz• 2 months ago

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

tqi• 2 months ago

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

JumpCrisscross5• 2 months ago

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

Fordec• 2 months 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• 2 months 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...

cmiles8• 2 months 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.”

jnakano89• 2 months 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.

zamalek• 2 months ago

If the figures look softer than expected, keep in mind that it's local lay-men buying in - while foreign career investors are selling out[1]. Broadcom's earnings call may have kicked it off: the CEO started off mistaking last year's figures, and had to start over with below projected numbers[2].

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/18/s-korea-market-volatility-ne... [2]: https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/06/03/br...

Tech sell-off widens as South Korea index plunges

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