#韩国KOSPI暴跌5%触发熔断 #夏日创作营 South Korean stocks drop more than 5% as a temporary trading halt mechanism is triggered

The South Korean stock market once again saw violent swings.
Today, South Korean stocks opened sharply lower. As of 8:18, the Korea KOSPI Index plunged by more than 5%, and the Korean exchange triggered a temporary trading halt mechanism for the KOSPI Index.
A report by Yonhap News on July 15 said that after days of sharp declines, the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) rebounded strongly on the 15th, quickly reclaiming the 7,000-point integer threshold; at one point during the day, it surged by more than 7%.
Market analysis believes that this rebound was mainly driven by cooling expectations of Fed rate hikes and a broad strengthening of the semiconductor sector in the overnight New York stock market, along with international institutions continuing to show strong interest in demand for artificial intelligence (AI) memory chips—together boosting market sentiment. Fueled by this, South Korean stocks opened higher and rose steadily that day, with major technology stocks generally rebounding.
Notably, since the beginning of this year, the KOSPI has triggered a temporary buy-side trading halt 36 times, and activated a circuit breaker 7 times due to sharp declines.
South Korea’s SBS TV said that recently, temporary trading halts for buying and selling have been alternating almost every day, with concerns over extreme market volatility steadily rising. An analysis by South Korea’s The Dong-A Ilbo said that the “topping” worries in the semiconductor industry, which has heated up again recently, is an important reason behind the intensification of stock price volatility.
Some market participants have begun to question whether the short-term surge in SK hynix’s share price and the South Korea Composite Stock Price Index is sustainable. As the saying in South Korea’s securities industry goes, “the higher the mountain, the deeper the valley”—the higher the stock hits new highs, the stronger the market’s vigilance against pullback risk. In addition, overseas investment banks believe that leveraged trading involving Samsung Electronics and SK hynix is an important driver of the recent increase in volatility in South Korea’s stock market.
A report by The Hankook Ilbo quoted viewpoints from JPMorgan Chase Private Bank, stating: Although leveraged ETFs (exchange-traded funds) do not change a company’s fundamentals, they amplify short-term market volatility and increase the risk of overheating on both the upswing and the downswing.
Futu Securities also pointed out that large numbers of retail investors use leverage, leaving the market with insufficient buffers to absorb declines. What might originally have been a typical market correction, after semiconductor stocks fell, instead led to consecutive events of margin calls and forced liquidations, creating a domino effect that ultimately turned into a round of mechanical crash.
On the 15th, at a policy meeting held in Seoul, President Lee Jae-myung of South Korea said that South Korea’s domestic stock market has seen “unprecedented large-scale surges” in an extremely short time recently, so it needs to undergo some time and volatility in order to stabilize. For stabilizing measures, reports in the market suggest South Korea may raise the threshold for leveraged investments.