Huatai Securities: South Korea's high export growth indicates that global AI supply chain trade is still on an upward trend, and the Asian AI supply chain is expected to continue to benefit.
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Nomura Securities: Market concerns about "overcapacity" may be excessive; South Korean chip investment is unlikely to quickly translate into production capacity.
According to Mars Finance, Nomura Securities analysts stated in a recent report that market concerns about "computing power oversupply" may be excessive, and the memory chip industry still has a long way to go before entering a downward cycle. The market is currently facing a severe shortage driven by artificial intelligence demand, with major chip manufacturers prioritizing the production of more profitable high-bandwidth memory (HBM), leading to limited supply of ordinary DRAM and NAND. Nomura analysts emphasized that in this context, concerns about oversupply are excessive. Because the semiconductor industry's construction and development cycles are often very long, projects announced by South Korean chip giants are unlikely to have a substantial impact on supply for several years. (Cailian Press)
South Korean regulators introduce tokenized securities roadmap
South Korea’s financial regulator introduced a three-phase roadmap for the issuance of tokenized assets, as the country prepares to adopt its first tokenized securities framework in February 2027.
South Korean think tank: Chip boom offsets manufacturing weakness, South Korean economy still on recovery track
According to Odaily Odaily, a South Korean official think tank stated on Wednesday that the South Korean economy remains on a recovery track, with the booming chip industry offsetting the overall slowdown in manufacturing. The Korea Development Institute (KDI), in its monthly economic assessment report, noted that South Korea's exports continued their "strong" expansion, driven by robust demand related to artificial intelligence. South Korea's monthly exports surpassed the $100 billion mark for the first time in June, reaching $102.25 billion, a year-on-year increase of 70.9%, setting a new record. KDI stated, "Although the growth rate of semiconductor exports has slowed, export value remains strong, supported by continued price increases." Driven by surging demand for memory chips, semiconductor exports nearly tripled to $44.82 billion, marking the first time monthly exports have exceeded $40 billion. However, KDI noted a slight decline in manufacturing output as "the rapid growth momentum in the semiconductor sector has slowed, and other sectors remain sluggish." KDI added that high oil prices and a weakening Korean won against the US dollar could "continue to exert upward pressure on prices, increasing the risk of further interest rate hikes and thus dragging down the recovery in consumption." (Jinshi)
Circuit breakers have become commonplace in the South Korean stock market, with high volatility attracting retail investors, turning trading in South Korean stocks into a "squid game."
According to Mars Finance, on July 7th, the Wall Street Journal published an article analyzing the recent high volatility of the South Korean stock market. The article cited data showing that in the past year, the South Korean KOSPI index fluctuated by more than 2% on 77 separate days. During the same period, the S&P 500 index in the US experienced only five such instances. The KOSPI fluctuated by more than 3% on 44 days, while the S&P 500 never exceeded 3%, and the KOSPI fluctuated by more than 5% on 23 days. The report stated that this volatility has become one of the factors attracting many South Korean retail investors who trade purely for the sake of trading. Maxence Visseau, founder of macro and quantitative hedge fund Arkevium Capital, commented, "Volatility is the key attraction for retail investors seeking excitement." The report also noted that foreign capital outflows exceeded $100 billion (approximately 154 trillion won) in the first half of this year, with $30 billion flowing out in June alone. This trend "could ultimately harm local investors."
CITIC Securities: South Korea is expected to become a key player in the era of physical AI.
According to a research report by CITIC Securities, as reported by Mars Finance, physical AI continues to be a hot topic. Essentially, it's a different expression of the concepts of embodied intelligence and robotics. South Korea recently proposed a super project for physical AI, and our recent research on the South Korean robotics industry chain suggests that South Korea has the potential to become a significant player in the physical AI era. South Korea has a strong robotics industry chain, primarily focused on hardware, mainly driven by conglomerates like Hyundai Group. It has initially established a complete industry chain from upstream components to downstream manufacturing of various complete machines. However, it still lags behind China and the US in terms of embodied models and cost reduction capabilities in the supply chain.
Concentrated leverage and high retail investor ratio: South Korea's semiconductor market's "amplifier mechanism" attracts attention.
According to Mars Finance, on July 6th, a comparison of US and South Korean tech stocks reveals a clear "leveraged ETF-dominated" structure for South Korean semiconductor leaders like SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics. The total assets of their individual stock ETFs and related products are several times the average daily trading volume of the underlying stocks. In contrast, US tech stocks like Micron Technology, Tesla, and Nvidia are primarily traded on the spot market, with ETF assets far below their average daily trading volume. Data (as of June 29, 2026) shows that SK Hynix's individual stock ETF and related products have total assets of $19.04 billion, while its average daily trading volume is only $4.47 billion; for Samsung Electronics, the corresponding figures are $12.43 billion and $4.49 billion respectively. In contrast, Micron Technology ETF has a size of $9.88 billion and an average daily turnover of $27.47 billion; Tesla's is $5.95 billion compared to $23.56 billion; and Nvidia's is $5.57 billion compared to $28.75 billion—the US stock market exhibits a structure opposite to that of the Korean stock market. Due to the lack of individual stock options in the Korean market and the high proportion of retail investors, leveraged funds are highly concentrated in ETF products, leading to stock prices being more driven by passive portfolio adjustments. Once the market falls, ETFs are forced to sell, but the market's absorption capacity is insufficient, easily amplifying price fluctuations and forming a unique "amplifier mechanism" in the Korean semiconductor market.