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Kospi Falls 5.3%, Advantest 14.7% After Qualcomm and Arm

AI Trade — Kospi Falls 5.3%, SK Hynix 9.5% and Advantest 14.7% After Qualcomm; Hong Kong Rises 3.5%

Asia, the market where the AI trade shows first, sold its chip makers hard: the Kospi never traded above Wednesday's close and fell 5.3%, triggering a sell curb, while Advantest lost 14.7% and Tokyo Electron 9.4%. Hong Kong and India rose. Qualcomm fell 7.5% after hours on a 26% drop in phone chip sales and rising memory costs, after a Wednesday in which the Dow rose 3.0% and the power suppliers to data centers fell up to 14%. Nasdaq futures are down 1%, Dow futures up; gold is at 4,129 and TLT back above 81.50.

In this edition

ASML EWY EWT INDA SAP AMD RSP XLY

The Morning 10 Thu, Nov 5, 2026 ~90 seconds 09:00 CET

The ten points

Asia is where the AI trade shows first each morning, and this morning it sold it hard. Korea's Kospi never traded above Wednesday's close, fell as much as 6.1% and closed down 5.28% at 5,383.80; the selling set off the exchange's automatic curb on program sell orders, Investing.com reported. SK Hynix fell 9.5% and Samsung Electronics 7.6%. In Tokyo, Advantest lost 14.7% and Tokyo Electron 9.4%, and Taiwan's index fell 3.2%. Money did not leave the region: Hong Kong's Hang Seng rose 3.5% and India's Nifty 50 2.2%.

Two things were sold together. After the US close, Qualcomm reported a 26% fall in smartphone chip sales and a profit outlook under estimates, and dropped 7.5% after hours; Arm beat but its royalty revenue fell short, and slipped 1.8%. And Wednesday's session in New York had already sold the companies that power and equip data centers on the Democratic win in Congress: Vistra fell 13.8%, Vertiv 12.9% and Quanta 11.7%, while the Dow rose 3.0% and Apple, Microsoft and Amazon gained 5% to 7%. Nasdaq-100 futures are down 0.95%, Dow futures up 0.43%.

Europe opens at 08:00 UTC after a split Wednesday: the STOXX 600 rose 1.8% and the DAX 2.2%, while Siemens Energy fell 8.0%, Prysmian 6.9%, ASM International 5.1% and ASML 3.4%. The Bank of England announces its rate decision at 12:00 UTC.

  1. AI Trade in Asia — Kospi falls 5.3% and never trades higher; Hong Kong and India rise
  2. Asia's AI Bellwethers — Advantest −14.7%, SK Hynix −9.5%, Tokyo Electron −9.4%; TSMC holds
  3. Europe's AI Infrastructure — Siemens Energy −8.0%, Prysmian −6.9% on Wednesday while the STOXX 600 rose 1.8%
  4. Qualcomm, Arm, AppLovin — chips sold after hours, AppLovin +22.8%
  5. Wednesday in Brief — Dow +3.0%, the average stock beats the index; power stocks sink
  6. US Futures — Nasdaq −0.95%, Dow +0.4%; the same split as Wednesday
  7. Bonds, Gold, Bitcoin and Oil — TLT back above 81.50, gold 4,129, Brent −8.7% on Wednesday
  8. AI Indices — Rubin −4.5% back under its line, AW40 +2.9%
  9. Earnings Grades — Apple over its paid line, Palantir under its sold line; four new windows
  10. Today — Bank of England 12:00 UTC, jobless claims 13:30 UTC; Cloudflare, JFrog, AAOI and IREN report

  1. AI Trade in Asia — Kospi falls 5.3% and never trades higher; Hong Kong and India rise

    Structure
    What
    Korea's Kospi opened lower and stayed there. Its best level of the day, 5,586.46, was 1.7% under Wednesday's close of 5,683.80; it fell as far as 5,336.88, down 6.1%, and closed down 5.28% at 5,383.80, after the selling set off the exchange's automatic curb on program sell orders (Investing.com). Taiwan's index fell 3.20% to 41,574.72 and closed within 0.2% of its low. Japan's Nikkei traded as much as 0.8% higher, turned down, fell as much as 2.3% and closed down 1.79% at 61,077.90. The rest of Asia went the other way. Hong Kong's Hang Seng was up 3.5% at 24,764 in the afternoon, with the Hang Seng Tech index up about 5% according to news reports, and India's Nifty 50 was up 2.2% at 24,485 in morning trade. In New York on Wednesday the Korea fund EWY fell 1.9% to 152.12 and the Taiwan fund EWT 1.2% to 97.08, while the India fund INDA rose to 50.03, 4.6% above its 50-day average.
    If
    Kospi and Taiwan hold Thursday's lows on Friday, before the US jobs report.
    Why
    Wednesday's Kospi swung 7% and closed green; Thursday's never saw green. The split inside Asia is the clearest it has been: the markets made of AI hardware (Korea, Taiwan, Japan's chip-equipment makers) were sold, and the markets made of internet platforms, banks and domestic demand (Hong Kong, India) were bought. That is the same split New York drew on Wednesday between the builders of AI and its users.
    Then
    The Kospi is now 16.6% under its 50-day average. A second day of sell curbs would put it in the kind of fall it saw in June and July; a close back above 5,586, today's high, would mark this as one day of catch-up.

  2. Asia's AI Bellwethers — Advantest −14.7%, SK Hynix −9.5%, Tokyo Electron −9.4%; TSMC holds

    Structure
    What
    SK Hynix fell 9.5% to 1,264,000 won, after trading between 1,320,000 (−5.4%) and 1,250,000 (−10.5%); on Wednesday it had closed flat after a 12-point swing. Samsung Electronics fell 7.6% to 201,500 won, with a low of 199,800 (−8.4%). In Tokyo, Advantest, which makes the machines that test AI chips, fell 14.7% to 29,485 yen and was down as much as 15.9%; Tokyo Electron fell 9.4% to 8,753 and SoftBank Group 6.8% to 3,980. TSMC was the exception: it traded between 2,285 (+1.1%) and 2,235 (−1.1%) Taiwan dollars and closed down 0.9% at 2,240.
    If
    Advantest and SK Hynix recover part of the fall on Friday, as they did on Wednesday.
    Why
    The heaviest falls were in memory and chip testing, the parts of the chain that Qualcomm's report touched directly: it named rising costs for memory, testing and packaging as a squeeze on its margins, and phone makers raising prices because of memory. TSMC, which makes the chips themselves and sets its own prices, barely moved.
    Then
    Advantest has fallen 14.7% in a day that followed a 10% intraday fall on Wednesday; if Tokyo's chip-equipment names fall again on Friday, Japan is no longer catching up with Korea but leading it lower.
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  4. Europe's AI Infrastructure — Siemens Energy −8.0%, Prysmian −6.9% on Wednesday while the STOXX 600 rose 1.8%

    Structure
    What
    Europe opens at 08:00 UTC. On Wednesday the STOXX 600 rose 1.8% to 657.40, the DAX 2.2% to 26,437.67 and the FTSE 100 1.8% to 10,829.21, led by banks: Deutsche Bank rose 6.9%. The companies that supply the AI build-out went the other way. Siemens Energy fell 8.0% to 119.46 euros and Prysmian 6.9% to 104.40, both more than double their losses at midday; Schneider Electric fell 3.4% and Nexans 2.8%. Among the chip-equipment makers, ASM International fell 5.1% to 683.60, ASML 3.4% to 1,337.60 and BESI 2.6% to 152.00, and the chip maker Infineon 4.1% to 50.24. SAP rose 3.7%, Siemens 2.2%, Novo Nordisk 5.6% after raising its outlook and the wind-power company Ørsted 4.6%.
    If
    ASML and Siemens Energy open higher despite Asia's chip sell-off.
    Why
    Europe sold its AI suppliers on the same day it bought its banks and software. The grid and power names fell the most, on the same worry that hit Vistra and Vertiv in New York: that state and local limits in the US will slow the data centers they sell into. The chip-equipment makers now carry a second worry from Asia this morning.
    Then
    Siemens Energy and Prysmian are both in our Euro-AI 50; the index page shows whether the rest of its grid and power names followed them on Wednesday.

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C · point 11 · members

Today in line 11: why Asia sold chips the morning after the market rewarded everything else, what Qualcomm's costs say about who pays for the AI build-out, why Rubin's fall back under its line matters more than Wednesday's rally, and the tests for Friday's jobs report.

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