South Korea’s KOSPI fell 9.99% yesterday, its fifth-largest single-day decline on record. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, the two largest memory-chip makers on Earth, each lost more than 12% in a single session. The Korea Exchange triggered a circuit breaker. Foreign investors sold a net 5.79 trillion won, roughly $3.8 billion.
The catalyst was mechanical: leveraged ETFs tied to Samsung and SK Hynix have swelled to $9.1 billion in assets since launching in late May. When those products sell, they force more selling. Nomura estimates they generate $9 billion in rebalancing demand for every 1% move. That loop fed on itself all day.
In the U.S., the Nasdaq fell 2.21%. Micron dropped more than 10%. The S&P 500 lost 1.44% to close at 7,365. These are the companies that physically manufacture the chips inside every frontier AI model. They are repricing at the exact moment the model owners are filing to go public at record valuations.