KOSPI crashes 5.9% below 6,000 as chip rout hits Samsung and SK Hynix; Korea halts programme selling

South Korea's main stock index, the KOSPI, fell 382 points (5.93%) to 6,002.06 by 7:13am Pakistan time on Tuesday, 13 October, dropping below 6,000 as a sell-off in chip stocks spread from Wall Street to Asia, Business Recorder reported from Reuters data.

At 9:47am Seoul time (5:47am PKT) the Korea Exchange halted programme sell orders for five minutes, a "sidecar" curb, after KOSPI 200 futures dropped 5.08% to 955.02.

What fell

Only 66 of 915 traded shares rose; 832 fell. Foreign investors sold a net 2.07 trillion won (about $1.5 billion), and the won weakened 0.22% to 1,338.8 per dollar. Money moved into bonds: the 10-year Korean yield fell 6.9 basis points to 4.25%.

If the index closes lower, it will be the KOSPI's fifth losing day in a row, its longest losing streak since September 2024.

Why chips sold off

The trigger came overnight in New York, where Micron Technology fell on reports that China's ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) is advancing quickly in memory chips. Samsung and SK Hynix are the world's two largest memory makers, and analysts said worries that Chinese rivals are closing the technology gap hit them hardest. The sell-off also reached SoftBank and ASML, CNBC reported.

The fall comes the same day the IMF said in its World Economic Outlook that investment in artificial intelligence is propping up global growth, a support that depends on chip demand (our IMF report).

Pakistan: PSX steady

The Pakistan Stock Exchange did not follow Asia down. The KSE-100 was at 165,502 at the latest reading on Tuesday, against 165,124 at Monday's close, after Monday's fall of 1,964 points on the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa emergency. Track the index on the KSE-100 page and the rupee on the dollar rate page.

Crypto, which has traded alongside tech shares this year, held up: bitcoin was near $83,660 on Tuesday, up from about $81,950 a day earlier (bitcoin price).