Kospi Fades From 7,171 to Close Under 7,000; Nikkei −1.2%

000660.KS005930.KS042700.KS

What

The Kospi opened at 7,045.79, above 7,000 for the first time in its history, after Monday’s 4.6% jump had stopped 4.6 points short at 6,995.39. It traded as high as 7,171.52 in the early afternoon, up 2.5%, and then sold off for the rest of the session to close at 6,974.85, down 0.3%. SK hynix, which had been up 5.2% at 1,876,000 won, closed at 1,797,000, up 0.8%; Samsung Electronics, up 2.8% at 277,500 in the afternoon, closed at 270,500, up 0.2%; Hanmi Semiconductor closed up 2.3% at 246,000. The buyers through the afternoon were institutions, 691 billion won net by 13:50 Seoul time, and foreigners, 321 billion won; retail investors were net sellers of 2.4 trillion won, taking profits into the strength. The won is at 1,342 per dollar, near its two-year high. Breadth was negative all day: 503 Kospi stocks fell against 360 that rose even while the index was up 2%.

If

The Kospi closes back above 7,000 on Wednesday — a second failure at the round number, with SK hynix unable to hold a 5% intraday gain, would mark Monday’s 4.6% as the top of this leg rather than a base.

Why

Korea is where the GPT-6 memory story is cleanest, two names and one product, and even there the buyers ran out before the close on day two.

Then

A 5% intraday round trip in SK hynix and a 200-point reversal in the Kospi is what a crowded trade looks like; the next test is New York’s reaction to the same chips at 9:30.

Open the detail →

6981.T3436.T4062.T6146.T8035.T9984.T

What

The Nikkei 225 opened down 556 points, recovered to a small gain by midday and then fell through the afternoon to close at 65,596.37, down 1.2%. The driver was the currency: the yen strengthened to 153.5 per dollar, from 156.00 at this hour on Monday, its best level since February 18 and past the 155.2 high it reached after July’s joint US-Japan intervention; it trades at 153.8 as of 06:32 UTC. Japanese nominal wages rose 4.7% in July against 3.9% expected, real wages 2.4%, the fastest since 2021, second-quarter GDP was revised up to 1.4% annualised, and Treasury Secretary Bessent told Governor Ueda he supports Japan’s ‘decisive market and monetary steps’. Exporters were sold: Toyota −3.8%, Honda −4.4%, Sony −2.7% at mid-afternoon. Among our Rubin names the equipment and materials group gave back Monday’s gains at the close: Murata −7.0%, Sumco −6.8%, Ibiden −5.9%, Disco −5.0%, Kioxia −2.8%, Tokyo Electron −2.6%, Advantest −1.1%, and at mid-afternoon Renesas −3.6%, Ebara −3.5%, Ferrotec −2.8%, Resonac −2.8%, Canon −2.4%, Shin-Etsu −1.7%, Lasertec −1.4%; only Kokusai Electric (+0.7%) held. SoftBank Group closed up 6.3% at ¥6,608, its highest since July 15, after Monday’s 10%.

If

The yen holds under 154 into the BoJ meeting — then Japan’s chip names are being repriced for a stronger currency, not for weaker orders, and the question for Korea, which does not have that problem, is why it faded too.

Why

Monday’s Tokyo rally was the AI order book with no bond market to argue with; Tuesday the argument arrived from the currency instead, and every yen-earning exporter in our index paid for it.

Then

Watch 152: the Tokyo desks quoted the yen there during the session, and a break revives the question of whether Japan’s exporters can rally into a hiking Bank of Japan at all.

Open the detail →

0992.HK2513.HK0522.HK0981.HK0268.HK

What

The Hang Seng is down 0.4% at 25,321 in the afternoon but the Hang Seng Tech index has lost more than 1%, and the selling was concentrated in the names we track. Lenovo fell 6.3% to HK$30.32, the largest decline among the Hang Seng’s blue chips, with Xiaomi −1.6% the morning after its product launch. Z.ai (Zhipu), the single constituent of our Foundation Models sub-index, dropped 10.4% to HK$912.50 after Jefferies cut the price-to-sales multiple it assigns to Zhipu’s cloud business from 50 to 30 times, wrote that the Chinese large-model market is ‘too crowded’ and said it prefers the full-stack cloud platforms with their own compute and balance sheets; MiniMax fell 6% to 7% in sympathy. ASMPT −3.1%, SMIC −3.2%, Kingdee −2.0%; Alibaba +0.4% and Tencent −0.4% were the calm ones. Mainland shares were flat, the CSI 300 −0.1%, with copper miners up on a record copper price. China’s August trade: exports +25.0% year on year, matching forecasts; imports +28.2%, short of the roughly 30% expected; the trade balance was in line.

If

Z.ai holds HK$900 — it closed at 1,314 in June when it joined the Hang Seng Tech index and is now 31% below that; under 900 the Foundation Models sub-index, which is this one stock until Anthropic and OpenAI list, prints a new low for the summer.

Why

A broker cutting the multiple on the benchmark name is the kind of event that reprices a whole sector, and Hong Kong’s AI names have no memory-chip cycle to hide behind.

Then

Lenovo at 30.32 is back to where it traded in mid-July; the next print that matters for it is Wednesday’s Samsara and Thursday’s Adobe on the software side, not the hardware.

Open the detail →