The Kospi, which had been recovering its losses from late last month, turned downward to a more than 4 percent drop intraday today (the 6th) following weakness in U.S. semiconductors overnight.

Although market volatility has subsided to some extent following supplementary measures for Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix leverage, the recovery in semiconductor sentiment, which had once been severely dampened, appears slow to gain momentum.

The Kospi opened down 1.81% at 6,478.75 and at one point sank to the 6,238 range, recording a 5.46% decline.

This wiped out the 5.38% gains accumulated over the previous two trading sessions.

Consequently, a sell sidecar was triggered at around 10:18 AM, suspending program trading sell quotes for five minutes.

This marks the 24th sell sidecar and the 46th overall sidecar activation—combining both buy and sell—so far this year.

As of 1:45 PM, the Kospi is down 299.47 points at 6,298.79.

This steep decline is occurring even though advancing stocks number 410, slightly fewer than the 469 declining stocks.

Meanwhile, the Kosdaq showed mixed movement today before turning higher, posting gains in the 1% range.

This marks its fifth consecutive session of gains.

The drop is notably steep compared to major Asian stock markets.

Currently, the decline rates of Japan's Nikkei 225 index and Taiwan's Weighted index remain at 0.97% and 0.46%, respectively, while Taiwanese semiconductor foundry TSMC is also limited to a decline of around 1.4% pochi.

Despite the easing of armed conflict between the U.S. and Iran and growing possibilities of reopening the Strait of Hormuz, the downturn was reportedly driven more by losses in artificial intelligence and semiconductor stocks such as Google parent Alphabet and AMD on Wall Street overnight.

Alphabet fell 4.06% on news that legendary senior scientist Jeff Dean is leaving the company, while AMD dropped 7.04% amid assessments that its future revenue outlook fell short of market expectations.

Affected by these factors, the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell 1.40%.

Memory company SanDisk also dropped 5.4% in regular trading, followed by a further decline of over 7% in after-hours trading.

Regarding today's decline, Lee Byung-gun, head of research center at DB Securities, explained, "The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index fell due to profit-taking centered on major U.S. big tech and semiconductor stocks yesterday, and foreign investors also shifted to net selling."

He added, "With a rotation into more stable sectors taking place in the domestic market, there appears to be a lack of buying agents to absorb the selling pressure in the semiconductor sector."

Lee Jin-woo, head of research center at Meritz Securities, stated, "As earnings announcements from major memory companies like SanDisk and Western Digital fell short of expectations, the contraction in semiconductor investment sentiment continues," and further analyzed that "weakened expectations for shareholder returns among large-cap stocks" also dragged down the index.

At the same time, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are down 6% and 10%, respectively.

Amidst this, SK Hynix is also drawing attention as concerns over the dilution of stock value leak out due to rumors regarding the pursuit of a Nasdaq listing for its U.S. NAND flash subsidiary, Solidigm.

Some media outlets previously reported that Solidigm is pushing for a Nasdaq listing and has posted job openings for personnel to oversee reports submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

In response, SK Hynix immediately issued a disclosure through the Financial Supervisory Service yesterday, stating, "Solidigm is reviewing various measures to strengthen its competitiveness, but nothing has been finalized yet. We will make a re-disclosure when specific details are finalized or within a month."

Additionally, among retail investors, voices are emerging cautioning that investments should be handled with care until the domestic futures and options expiration date on the 13th, citing foreign investors' bearish bets in the derivatives market and recent selling pressure as grounds to watch out for potential speculative trading.

Despite various analyses suggesting that the fundamentals of semiconductor companies remain solid, market sentiment is failing to find a clear direction, which analysts attributed to the market reacting sensitively even to minor negative news.

Seo Sang-young, managing director at Mirae Asset Securities, said, "While the market has recently been focusing on macroeconomic impacts such as interest rates, it is reacting even more sensitively to individual corporate issues."

(Photo: Yonhap News)