By Patrick O'Donnell
The world's hottest index was saved again by the world's hottest stock play.
The KOSPI index staged a dramatic, V-shaped recovery Friday — after dropping as low as 7,300 in the morning, South Korea's benchmark ended the session up 5.76% to close at 8,088.34.
It followed a brutal tech rout in the previous session, which mimicked the chip-stocks selloff in U.S. markets where the tech-heavy Nasdaq finished 0.8% lower to end a holiday-shortened week. Trading was halted on the KOSPI Thursday as the slump triggered a sell-side regulatory halt, or "circuit breaker," very early in the morning session for 15 minutes. The index closed trading down 7.89% for the day.
The Seoul market is a hostage to the benchmark index's two largest constituents — memory-chip titans SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics — and the pair again drove the recovery Friday, surging 10.9%, and 8.2%, respectively. Reports that AI startup Anthropic is in talks with Samsung to develop custom hardware helped drive gains.
In the previous session SK Hynix collapsed by 14.6% and Samsung plummeted 9.1%.
The two are major rivals to U.S. stock-market darling Micron, which ended Thursday's session down 5.5% at $975.56. It remains up 166.4% for the year as a memory frenzy grips global markets as it has become the hot topic in the AI revolution.
The KOSPI has become the world's best performing index in 2026 for the same reason and is up around 92% for the year after Friday's rebound. That compares with a 9.3% rise for the S&P 500. The South Korean resurgence bodes well for a Micron upturn when U.S. markets reopen on Monday after the July 4 holiday.
Write to Patrick O'Donnell at patrick.odonnell@barrons.com
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