Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix Plunge 4% to 6% Amid Heavy Selling by Foreigners and Institutions

Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix finished regular trading sharply lower today (the 14th), dropping 4% and 6%, respectively.

In the main bourse today, Samsung Electronics closed down 4.05% from the previous session at 249,000 won.

Starting the session down 3.85% at 249,500 won, Samsung Electronics temporarily narrowed its losses to 254,500 won (-1.93%), but resumed its downward slope in the afternoon.

SK Hynix closed down 6.35% from the previous session at 1,697,000 won, and momentarily slumped as low as 1,686,000 won (-6.95%) during trading.

Investor sentiment in semiconductor stocks was dampened over the weekend as the chiefs of four major global artificial intelligence (AI) companies—Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceX, and Google DeepMind—raised their voices calling for a slowdown in the pace of AI development.

News that a scheduled meeting between Iran, Iraq, and Gulf states to discuss the Strait of Hormuz issue was postponed at the last minute also acted as a negative factor.

Originally, those nations were scheduled to hold a foreign ministers' meeting on the 14th local time.

Against this backdrop, while international oil prices halted their surge and dropped sharply on the 11th, the final trading day of last week, leading the three major New York stock indices to rebound in unison, Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi broke the news of the meeting's postponement on the night of the 13th.

Minister Albusaidi did not mention when the meeting would be rescheduled.

The combination of an increasingly jittery macroeconomic environment due to the prolonged war and the emergence of theories advocating for a slowdown in AI appears to have dragged down the entire market.

Meanwhile, in the securities market, foreign investors and institutional investors net sold 3.2995 trillion won and 1.1715 trillion won, respectively.

Retail investors net purchased 2.9722 trillion won.

In the KOSPI electrical and electronic sector, to which Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix belong, foreigners and institutions were also in a net-selling position of 3.2600 trillion won and 1.0606 trillion won, while individuals recorded a net-buying advantage of 2.8758 trillion won.

Other corporations, which recently emerged as a major supply-and-demand player following large-scale treasury stock buybacks by Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, net purchased 1.4306 trillion won.

SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics claimed the top and second spots, respectively, among stocks most net-sold by foreign investors today.

Foreigners net sold 2.0652 trillion won worth of SK Hynix and 848.2 billion won worth of Samsung Electronics.

Institutions were also tallied as having net sold 457.1 billion won in SK Hynix and 445.1 billion won in Samsung Electronics.

(Photo: Yonhap News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.