Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix closed sharply lower today (July 16), tumbling by more than 8% and 11%, respectively.

In the KOSPI market, Samsung Electronics finished at 255,000 won, down 8.77% from the previous trading day, while SK Hynix closed at 1,842,000 won, a decline of 11.53%.

Both stocks remained weak throughout the session, with intraday drops reaching as low as 9.66% and 12.54%, respectively.

The downturn in the domestic market was driven by a broad sell-off of major semiconductor stocks on the New York Stock Exchange overnight.

Morgan Stanley analyzed that concerns over a slowdown in the semiconductor industry are growing as U.S. data center construction projects are being postponed or canceled one after another.

Furthermore, investor sentiment was dampened by concerns that the oligopoly of Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron could be shaken as Chinese memory chipmaker ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) has initiated an initial public offering (IPO) process valued at 8.55 billion dollars.

Reflecting these concerns, Micron and SanDisk shares fell by more than 8% in New York overnight, and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index dropped 2.08%.

In the KOSPI market today, foreign and institutional investors net sold 1.3928 trillion won and 2.369 trillion won worth of stocks, respectively, while individual investors net bought 3.6622 trillion won.

In particular, SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics were the top two stocks sold by foreign investors, who offloaded 894.4 billion won of SK Hynix and 218.3 billion won of Samsung Electronics.

Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix have been experiencing volatile price swings throughout this week.

After a sharp decline on July 13, the stocks rebounded for two consecutive days, but they resumed their downward trend with a significant drop today.

Meanwhile, CompaniesMarketCap.com, a U.S.-based market capitalization tracking site, valued SK Hynix at 882.2 billion dollars as of today's market close, ranking it 18th among global listed companies.

Samsung Electronics maintained its 12th position with a market capitalization of 1.129 trillion dollars.

(Photo: Yonhap News)