[Anchor]

Semiconductor stocks, including SK Hynix, experienced another sharp decline today (August 6). The drop is analyzed to be driven by weak performance in U.S. semiconductor stocks overnight, compounded by concerns that SK Hynix's NAND flash subsidiary might pursue a separate listing in the United States.

Reporter Kim Hye-min has the details.

[Reporter]

The KOSPI closed at 6,296, breaking below the 6,300 mark.

Large-cap semiconductor shares led the steep decline, with SK Hynix in particular plummeting by more than 10%.

The aftermath of overnight earnings reports from U.S. memory company SanDisk spilled over into the domestic stock market.

Although the financial results beat market forecasts, the outlook for future sales fell short of investors' expectations, causing related corporate stock prices to plummet significantly.

Major Asian semiconductor stocks weakened together, with Japanese memory company Kioxia plunging over 10%.

[Park Seok-hyun / Researcher, Woori Bank: Investors who bought at high price levels are cutting their losses, while those who entered earlier this year or last year are seeing substantial profits and liquidating their positions...]=

In the case of SK Hynix, some analysts view that the decline was further fueled by overlapping factors—despite the company's denials, lingering concerns that its NAND flash subsidiary might be separately listed in the U.S., and an incident where 11 shares were executed at the lower limit price on an alternative trading system this morning due to trading mechanism issues.

While leverage trading volume for single stocks has shrunk to below 1 trillion won, sharp fluctuations in our market persist as global semiconductor stocks exhibit high volatility.

There is also speculation that a significant portion of leverage trading is already embedded in major global semiconductor stocks, heavily impacting the domestic market, which carries a high weighting of semiconductor shares.

[Lee Hyo-seop / Head of Financial Industry Division, Korea Capital Market Institute: There are growing suspicions that foreign hedge funds are engaging heavily in leverage investments, dictating the rises and declines of top global semiconductor stocks by market capitalization.]

Recently, a phenomenon where investment funds are shifting from single-stock leverage to index leverage ETFs has also emerged, raising concerns that this could become a source of instability moving forward.

(Photo courtesy of Shin Jin-soo | Video edited by Kim Jong-mi | Designed by Kang Yoon-jung)