Today, Bitcoin retraced, mainly due to the linkage with the U.S. stock market decline, causing a sharp drop in the overall market!

The Korean exchange triggered the KOSPI index sidecar mechanism after the KOSPI 200 futures fell 5%, pausing algorithmic trading for 5 minutes.

In the early trading session, South Korea's composite index was hammered down by large profit-taking from foreign and institutional investors, dropping over 5% during the session and falling below 9,000 points.

The "storage giants" in the Korean stock market both suffered heavy declines. Samsung Electronics' stock price fell over 5%, and SK Hynix dropped nearly 6%.

The foreign exchange market was also under pressure. The Fed's hawkish stance and risk aversion sentiment intertwined, pushing the won against the dollar higher, which further intensified stock market volatility.

Japanese stocks followed the plunge, with the Nikkei 225 index down 1%. SoftBank Group plummeted over 8%, and Kioxia fell over 5%.

Hong Kong and A-shares major indices all declined, with the Hang Seng Tech Index, Shenzhen Component Index, and ChiNext Index each dropping over 2%.

Among them, in the Hong Kong stock market, Southbound funds doubled long Samsung Electronics, falling over 13%, and doubled long Hynix, dropping over 11%.

U.S. tech stocks plummeted, and foreign capital continued to flee
The sudden sharp decline in the Korean stock market was mainly due to the cooling of profit expectations for U.S. tech stocks and a confluence of global macroeconomic negative shocks.

Overnight, the negative sentiment from the sharp decline in U.S. tech stocks quickly spread to global markets.

SpaceX's stock price plunged 16%, evaporating $400 billion in market value overnight and falling below its first-day closing price.

ARM dropped over 7%, Google and Oracle fell 5%, Amazon and Broadcom declined over 4%, Microsoft fell over 3%, and Meta declined over 2%.

This morning, the sell-off in U.S. tech stocks directly transmitted to the Korean stock market.

Foreign and institutional investors jointly led a strong sell-off, dominating the market trend.

In the morning session, foreign investors showed signs of massive outflows, with net sales ranging from about 1.18 trillion won (approximately $11.8k) up to a peak of 1.8 trillion won.

Domestic Korean institutional investors also joined the sell-off, with net sales of about 65 billion won to 2.05 trillion won, further accelerating the index decline.

Combined with arbitrage and non-arbitrage trading, the total net selling volume of programmatic trading exceeded 1.67 trillion won, further amplifying market selling pressure.

It is worth noting that, in the face of dual selling pressure from foreign and institutional investors, Korean retail investors countered by buying the dip.

During just the morning session, retail investors alone net bought about 1.24 trillion won to a peak of 1.97 trillion won worth of stocks, sparking a large-scale bottom-fishing rally.

However, this was hardly enough to reverse the fierce sell-off by foreign and institutional investors.