[Anchor]

The Kospi plummeted, briefly falling below the 5,000 mark during trading for the first time in 9 months. A circuit breaker was triggered right after the market opened, but the index recovered somewhat in the late session to barely stay above the 5,000 threshold.

For our first report, Min Gyeongho has the details.

[Reporter]

Starting 2.24% lower, the Kospi plummeted immediately after the market opened, dropping more than 8% within 3 minutes to fall below the 5,000 mark.

As a flood of sell orders poured in, a circuit breaker was triggered at 9:03 AM, halting trading for 20 minutes.

This marks the first time since February that the Kospi has dropped into the 4,000 range during trading.

Even after the circuit breaker was lifted, the Kospi fluctuated wildly before ultimately recovering some ground to close at 5,059.

Foreign investors net-sold more than 2.7 trillion won in total.

Institutions net-purchased nearly 1.7 trillion won, and retail investors also net-bought 600 billion won.

Samsung Electronics fell over 6% to 188,700 won, while SK Hynix plunged more than 10% to finish the session at 1,132,000 won.

The plunge in the Kospi appears to have been influenced by Nasdaq recording its largest drop in history overnight.

The Nasdaq tumbled 5.52% amid growing concerns that stricter regulations on data centers could be imposed as the Democratic Party secured control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives in the U.S. midterm elections.

Immediately following the end of the midterm elections, shares of hyperscalers such as Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet rose while infrastructure companies including semiconductors plunged, but this time all sectors appeared to take a hit.

In particular, the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index plummeted 12.2%, and the Kospi, where Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix account for about half of the total market capitalization, could not avoid the impact.

Due to the sharp decline in the Kospi, a sell sidecar was also triggered on the Kosdaq right after the market opened.

The Kosdaq closed down 5% at 644.

(Video Editing: Lee Sangmin)