(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Yuhyang Kim = Due to concerns about the profitability of artificial intelligence (AI) investment and foreign selling, KOSPI recorded the most sluggish returns among major stock markets this month.
The KOSDAQ index also remained at the bottom, with nearly 7 out of 10 domestic listed stocks falling.
According to the Korea Exchange and financial information service provider Yonhap Infomax on the 19th, KOSPI fell 17.11% from this month to the 16th. This is the lowest rate of return among stock indices in major countries.
Indonesia's IDX Composite Index (-14.59%) had the next largest drop, followed by China's Shenzhen Composite Index (-7.40%) and KOSDAQ Index (-7.14%).
On the other hand, Brazil's Bovespa index rose 10.24%, recording the highest return. Russia's RTS (7.17%), Switzerland's SMI (4.06%), and India's Sensex (3.10%) also rose.
While emerging market indices such as Brazil, Russia, and India ranked among the top in terms of return, Korea and Taiwan stock indices (-1.73%) and Japan's Nikkei 255 index (-2.14%), which have a somewhat greater influence on the semiconductor industry, showed weakness.
KOSPI maintained the top rank among major countries in terms of monthly returns for most of this year, except for last March, right after the outbreak of the U.S.-Iran war, and July, when a sharp decline occurred due to the global semiconductor adjustment.
For example, in April, it showed a sharp rise of 30.61%.
However, as momentum weakened after July when KOSPI and KOSDAQ plunged 22.19% and 21.44%, respectively, KOSPI rose only 3.40% in August and 0.26% in September, and plunged more than 17% this month.
In this process, KOSPI also lost the title of ‘No. 1 in cumulative growth rate this year’. As of the 16th, Taiwan's stock market index rose 62.66% to take the lead, and KOSPI, whose return has shrunk to 34.50%, has even fallen behind Poland's WIG index (36.66%).
Similar to July, this slump in the domestic stock market is interpreted as a result of shaken expectations for the growth of the AI industry.
As AI cloud company Coreweave's corporate bond price plummeted, concerns over credit risk grew, and AI developer Antropic's sales growth in the third quarter slowed compared to the previous quarter, raising doubts about whether the massive AI investment could lead to actual profits.
As a result, expectations for semiconductor investment and demand weakened, putting a burden on large stocks leading the domestic stock market, such as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix.
Foreign selling also increased the decline in the domestic stock market.
Foreigners continued to be net sellers in the stock market for eight consecutive trading days starting from the 2nd, selling a total of 18.1308 trillion won.
Following the turn to net buying on the 16th, the 'buy' trend continued in the early part of the market on this day, but later turned to 'sell' again.
The decline was not limited to large semiconductor stocks. As of the 16th of this month, the stock prices of 1,899 (68.80%) of the total 2,760 stocks listed on KOSPI and KOSDAQ fell. This means that nearly 7 out of 10 stocks fell.
By market, 652 KOSPI and 1,247 KOSDAQ stocks fell. What is noteworthy is the size of the stocks that fell sharply during this period.
There were a total of 1,120 stocks (40.58%) with a decline rate of more than 5%, of which 588 stocks (21.30%) fell more than 10%, and 127 stocks (4.60%) fell more than 20%.
The declines of Samsung Electronics [005930] (-19.74%) and SK Hynix [000660] (-28.38%) were also large.
The stock with the largest decline was Big Wave Robotics [0035S0] in the KOSDAQ market, which fell 61.60% this month.
On the other hand, the stocks whose stock prices rose were only 727 (26.34% of the total): 254 on the KOSPI and 473 on the KOSDAQ.
If we expand the counting period as of 9:33 a.m. on this day, the number of KOSPI and KOSDAQ stocks whose stock prices fell this month totaled 1,923, accounting for 69.67% of the total.
