Daily Woody | Jul 29, 2026 — Kospi's Worst Month on Record, Hynix Reports Today
The Kospi closed Tuesday at 6,023.66, down 732.09 points or 10.84 percent. A sell-side sidecar halted program trading at 9:06 a.m., and a full circuit breaker stopped the market for twenty minutes at 10:13 a.m. It was the eighth such halt of 2026.
The index opened 5.26 percent lower at 6,400.27, fell as far as 5,992.91 intraday, and clawed back above 6,000 by the close. Samsung Electronics ended 13.4 percent lower at 220,000 won (about $150); SK hynix fell 14.65 percent to 1,550,000 won (about $1,060), with its Nasdaq depositary receipts slipping under their July offering price. The Kosdaq lost 7.72 percent to 705.85.
For July as a whole the Kospi is down roughly 29 percent, its steepest monthly fall on record, past the 27 percent drop of October 1997. It sits about 34 percent below its June 22 record close of 9,114.55. It is also still up more than 40 percent for the year.
Reuters puts Samsung Electronics and SK hynix at more than half the Kospi's weighting. Tuesday's arithmetic followed from that: the two fell 13 and 15 percent, and the index fell 10.84 percent. Some 878 stocks closed lower on the exchange, and two of them account for most of what that headline number reports. That is the part worth exporting from Seoul — the index has become a leveraged position on one industry, and the leverage works in both directions.
Reuters also noted that it could not independently verify the report that set the selling off: that a Chinese state-backed firm has begun producing domestic immersion deep-ultraviolet lithography tools. So an unverified engineering claim set the tone for the session. It ended with the exchange valued at 4,933 trillion won, about $3.4 trillion. Today at 9 a.m. Seoul time, SK hynix posts second-quarter results that analysts expect to show operating profit near 64 trillion won (about $44 billion). Whether a record print steadies a market that just discounted its future is the day's real test.
The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index dropped 4.49 percent on Tuesday in New York, following a 2.23 percent decline the day before.
The broader tape split. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 537.24 points, or 1.03 percent, to 52,747.32, and the S&P 500 added 15.60 points to 7,428.78. The Nasdaq Composite fell 55.17 points to 24,876.91.
SK hynix depositary receipts broke below $130 during the session, a low since listing. Morningstar's equity analyst told AP the market was unsettled by the pace of China's chipmaking equipment progress.
Financial Services Commission chairman Lee Eok-won said Tuesday that the agency would first assess the deposit rules taking effect on Friday, which lift the minimum cash balance for single-stock leveraged funds from 10 million won to 30 million won.
If demand does not cool, he said, the FSC would consider raising eligibility requirements further and setting per-investor caps.
Sixteen leveraged and inverse funds tracking Samsung Electronics and SK hynix alone launched on May 27, while the chip rally was still running. The index went on rising into late June. Korea has spent the two months since writing the rules in arrears, and Friday’s deposit threshold is the first to take effect.
ChangXin Memory Technologies closed its Shanghai STAR Market debut on Monday at 49 yuan, up about 466 percent from an offer price of 8.66 yuan. It touched 55.03 yuan intraday. Market value reached roughly 3.3 trillion yuan, near $487 billion, overtaking Industrial and Commercial Bank of China at about 2.6 trillion yuan.
The Hefei-based company raised 57.92 billion yuan, about $8.6 billion — Asia's largest offering this year and bigger than SMIC's Shanghai sale in 2020. Turnover reached about 141 billion yuan, a single-day record for an A-share. Bloomberg reported the retail tranche drew 9.4 million orders and was oversubscribed more than 200 times.
By AP's reckoning CXMT is still worth less than Samsung Electronics, SK hynix or Micron. Its prospectus put its 2025 share of the global DRAM market at 7.67 percent. Nomura analyst Donnie Teng projects that share reaching 18 percent by the end of 2028.
Take the 466 percent apart before reading anything into it. Only 6.73 percent of CXMT's shares were free to trade on day one; the rest sit under lock-up. A 212-times subscription rate met a sliver of float, and the price did what prices do in that situation. Set beside the number that describes the business — 7.67 percent of global DRAM sales in 2025 — the debut priced a position the company does not yet hold.
Which does not make the repricing wrong. Nomura's path to 18 percent by 2028 would put CXMT roughly where Micron sits today, and Apple is reported to be testing its DRAM for devices sold in China. Memory has run with three suppliers at scale, and that is the setting in which analysts can pencil in a 76 percent operating margin at SK hynix for a single quarter. A fourth supplier changes the setting long before it changes market share. Seoul spent Tuesday marking down the arithmetic.
President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met privately at the White House on Tuesday for about ninety minutes. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the meeting positive and productive. Netanyahu's office said afterwards that both leaders restated a shared determination that Iran must never hold a nuclear weapon.
The method divided them. In a Fox News interview Trump objected to Netanyahu airing Israeli intelligence assessments about a suspected Iranian nuclear site, saying he already knew what was happening there and reading the Israeli disclosure as pressure to keep America involved.
AP reported that mediators led by Qatar and Pakistan have made substantial progress toward restoring talks, and Bloomberg reported that Iran and Oman are discussing opening a middle shipping lane through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran's Revolutionary Guard command said the same day that American forces had threatened shipping off the Iranian coast for three days and warned of a response. Trump met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy separately on Tuesday.
President Lee Jae-myung, on a state visit to Brazil, met President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Brasilia on Monday local time. The two agreed to create a bilateral working group with the aim of resuming negotiations on a Korea–Mercosur trade agreement in December. Lula said he had named Brazil's vice president to lead the group from his side.
Seven memoranda were signed, covering rare earths and other critical minerals, energy, space and cybersecurity. The two governments agreed to build a state-to-state channel connecting Brazilian mineral resources with Korean processing and manufacturing.
They also agreed to widen aviation and space cooperation, building on Korea's purchase of Brazil's C-390 transport aircraft. Lee asked Brazil to streamline customs and licensing for Korean food, cosmetics and health products.
The Democratic Party moved on Tuesday to advance an amendment to the Criminal Procedure Act abolishing prosecutors' supplementary investigation authority. When the judiciary subcommittee took up the bill ahead of a separate election-commission special counsel bill, People Power Party members walked out.
The same day, a steering subcommittee approved a National Assembly Act amendment cutting the fast-track review period from a maximum of 330 days to roughly 90 — 60 days in committee, 30 in judiciary — and requiring a bill to be tabled at the first plenary sitting after referral. PPP members did not vote.
The Democrats aim to pass both on Thursday. The PPP has said it will seek a mediation committee and use unlimited debate. Talks on the election-commission bill had not produced agreement as of Tuesday afternoon.
Korean prosecutors historically both directed investigations and decided indictments. A 2021 reform moved most first-instance investigation to the police but left prosecutors the power to send cases back and order further work. Removing that power ends the last routine channel through which prosecutors shape a police file.
The two bills do different kinds of work. Abolishing supplementary investigation authority redistributes power between two agencies. Shortening the fast-track clock changes the speed at which every future bill clears the legislature. The first can be reversed by the next majority; the second is inherited by it.
The fast-track channel came in with the 2012 National Assembly Advancement Act. That law curbed passage by a simple majority and, in exchange, opened a route by which three-fifths of a chamber could send a bill to the floor automatically. The 330 days were the deliberation attached to that route. Cutting them to 90 speeds up the governing party now and speeds up whoever governs next, which is why the opposition's answer is a filibuster — the other clock still on the books. Thursday's sitting will record two things: whether the bills pass, and how many hours each side spent on procedure.
Han Duck-soo appeared Tuesday afternoon before the Seoul High Court's first criminal division in the perjury appeal of former President Yoon Suk-yeol. Before questioning began he asked to speak, and invoked his right to refuse testimony under Article 148 of the Criminal Procedure Act.
His own case is on appeal to the Supreme Court, he said, and answering could prejudice it. The court will hear closing arguments and Yoon's final statement at the next sitting, on August 19, without further testimony.
Yoon was charged over evidence he gave in November at Han's trial, where prosecutors say he falsely described how the cabinet was convened on the night of the December 2024 martial law declaration. A lower court acquitted him.
Incheon police and fire authorities began a joint forensic examination of Coupang's No. 32 logistics centre in Seoknam-dong on Tuesday morning, with about 40 personnel from the National Forensic Service, the Korea Electrical Safety Corporation and other agencies.
Two engineers assessed the building’s stability before anyone went in; the fire had burned for 109 hours. Investigators concentrated on the sixth floor, the presumed point of origin, examining stored goods and electrical systems. Batteries and other consumer items were taken for laboratory analysis.
Police are questioning Coupang staff as witnesses and reviewing security camera footage of the first moments of the fire. Progressive Party floor leader Yoon Jong-oh and the public services union held a press conference at the Assembly the same day criticising the company.
SK hynix files second-quarter results Wednesday at 9 a.m. Seoul time and holds a conference call. The FnGuide consensus is revenue of 84.17 trillion won (about $57.5 billion) and operating profit of 64.24 trillion won (about $44 billion), up 278.6 and 597.4 percent from a year earlier.
That would lift the operating margin from 71.5 percent in the first quarter to 76.3 percent. Samsung Electronics has already reported preliminary second-quarter operating profit of 89.4 trillion won (about $61 billion); its audited figures come Thursday at 10 a.m.
Also on Wednesday, 17.79 million underlying shares behind SK hynix's American depositary receipts list in Seoul, opening two-way conversion between the receipts and ordinary shares. Between the July 10 Nasdaq debut and July 27, the Seoul line fell 16.69 percent while the receipts fell 8.0 percent.
The Federal Open Market Committee meets Tuesday and Wednesday in Washington. Futures priced through CME FedWatch put the odds of holding the target range at 3.50 to 3.75 percent at 62.1 percent, and of a quarter-point increase at 37.9 percent. A hold would be the fifth in a row.
The live case for a hike rests on energy. Brent traded above $100 during the recent escalation with Iran and has fallen back into the $80s since American strikes paused, but the follow-on talks remain unfinished.
Chair Kevin Warsh retired forward guidance earlier this year, so the statement language and the press conference carry more weight than usual for a meeting the market expects to be uneventful.
The North Pacific and Tibetan highs are stacked over the peninsula, and the heat holds. Central regions and the Jeolla provinces see periodic cloud today; Gyeongsang and Jeju stay mostly clear. Heat advisories cover most of the country, with apparent temperatures above 33°C and above 35°C in the south.
| Wed 29 | Thu 30 | Fri 31 | Sat Aug 1 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Low | 22–26°C | 21–28°C | 21–27°C | 21–27°C |
| High | 32–37°C | 31–38°C | 31–37°C | 32–38°C |
| Sky | Cloud, centre & southwest | Mostly clear | Mostly clear | Mostly clear |
Advisories — Severe heat warnings are in force for Gwangyang, central Daegu, parts of Gyeongsan, Goryeong and Gyeongju, and for Yangsan, Gimhae, Miryang, Uiryeong, Changnyeong and Hapcheon. Apparent temperatures there may exceed 38°C, with actual readings near 39°C. Overnight lows stay above 25°C across much of the country. Avoid prolonged outdoor work and drink water often.
Samsung Electronics and SK hynix account for more than half the Kospi's weight, by Reuters' count. On Tuesday the two fell 13 and 15 percent and the whole index fell 10.84 percent. Some 878 stocks closed lower, and most of them barely registered in the total.
Korea is not the only market with this shape. Munhwa Ilbo quoted the American strategist Paul Nolte noting that semiconductors have grown from about 8 percent of the S&P 500 a few years ago to over 20 percent. Korea simply got there first, and got there further.
An index began as a way to hold many things so that no one thing could decide the outcome. Seoul's index now moves the way a single trade moves. That is excellent on the way up. July has been the other demonstration.
So this week's one question. When a benchmark becomes a bet on one industry, what is it still a benchmark of?
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