Following two consecutive incidents in a short period where SK Hynix's opening price plummeted to the lower limit due to abnormal orders, Nextrade (NXT) has introduced a strong measure to temporarily ban upper and lower limit orders in the pre-market.

Nextrade announced that starting on the 12th, upper and lower limit orders will be temporarily prohibited in the pre-market, which runs from 8:00 AM to 8:50 AM before the regular market opens.

The measure will remain in place until the additional introduction of the static volatility interruption (static VI) system, which is scheduled for September 14 of this year.

Once the static VI system is introduced, if an order is received at a price that fluctuates by 10% or more compared to the previous day's reference price, it will not be executed immediately. Instead, trading will resume after calculating a balanced price through a 2-minute single-price auction.

A Nextrade official explained, "This is a measure to minimize cases where upper and lower limit prices are executed due to order errors."

Previously, SK Hynix began trading at the lower limit twice within about a week in the pre-market.

On the 28th of last month, right after the pre-market opened, just a single share of SK Hynix was executed at the lower limit price of 1,272,000 won, which reportedly caused around 80 billion won in long positions to be liquidated in the cryptocurrency derivatives market.

A few days later, yesterday (the 6th), right after the pre-market opened, SK Hynix traded at 1,168,000 won, plunging more than 29% compared to the previous day's regular market closing price.

Although the trading volume was a mere 11 shares, because the initial price determination method in the pre-market is continuous trading rather than single-price auction unlike the existing regular market, the opening price was set as is.

Although the drop narrowed down to the 3% range immediately afterward, confusion arose among investors who were already anxious due to the global semiconductor correction.

Concerns have been raised that Nextrade's pre-market initial price determination relies on continuous trading, making it vulnerable to order mistakes or opening price manipulation.

A Nextrade official stated, "Even when the volatility interruption (VI) is triggered, we plan to change the method from halting trading to promoting price stabilization through a 2-minute single-price auction."

(Reported by Kim Taewon | Video Editing by Lee Yujin | Design by Yang Hyemin | Produced by SBS Digital News)