Korean stocks catch up with losses, down more than 4%; memory stocks extend their downtrend

Last Friday, when global semiconductors crashed hard, Korea was on holiday. Today trading opens and they start paying back all at once. KOSPI opened lower by 4.16% at 6,536.65 points. Samsung Electronics and SK hynix both fell more than 5%—and early on, it smashed market sentiment to pieces
Since the June 22 peak, KOSPI has fallen nearly 25% in total. The even more striking figure is the forward P/E of 5.78x—not just breaking the trough of the 2008 financial crisis, but the lowest since 2004. This is not a normal correction; it’s pricing in some deeper, structural worries
What I think the market is doing now is resetting the timing for the entire memory cycle. This upturn in the memory cycle has been talked about since the end of 2023, but the AI-driven demand is concentrated in high-end HBM products. The clearing of inventories in traditional DRAM and NAND hasn’t been as clean as people imagined
The price-hike narrative is real, but how long can it last, and which product categories can truly realize the upside—now the market has put a big question mark on that
The institutional camp is also quite interestingly split. Goldman Sachs keeps its KOSPI 12,000 target and urges buying on dips for entry, while UBS gives 9,200 and tells you to shift toward defense. The two institutions use the same data to reach completely opposite conclusions, which shows the uncertainty at this level is real—nobody has conviction
Meanwhile, TSMC plans to add $100 billion in US investment, with a total scale of up to $265 billion. The industry side is expanding capacity, while the secondary market is dumping—this divergence alone says a lot. The capital markets aren’t worried that AI demand doesn’t exist; they’re worried that supply expansion will outpace demand landing too much, and in the end, it will push prices down
This week’s earnings season is the validation window. Intel and Texas Instruments will report numbers one after another, and SK hynix and Samsung’s data will follow. If US tech giants’ capex guidance is cut, memory stocks will get another hit. If it’s better than expected, that’s the excuse for a rebound
Before the data comes out, at this level I don’t dare say it’s an oversold rebound, and I also don’t dare say you should keep missing out. A 5.78x P/E is indeed cheap, but cheap has never been a sufficient condition for stocks to rise—cheap can always get even cheaper
Wait for the earnings, look at the numbers, then make a call
DYOR Not investment advice
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