The Market Stopped Paying Records

The read for FOMC afternoon — companion to this morning's Morning 10 and to the study we published today on the testing duopoly, The Verification Tax.

A record quarter, sold in seconds

SK Hynix reported the best quarter in its corporate history overnight: operating profit of ₩60.5 trillion, up 557% year on year, on revenue of ₩79.3 trillion. Both lines missed consensus by roughly 6% — and the capex line, read precisely, was held at the high end of the already-guided ₩40 trillion range while the street had modelled a raise. Seoul's answer was a second crash day: the KOSPI fell another ~7% after Tuesday's −10.8% close at 6,024, tripping the eighth market-wide circuit breaker of the year, with Hynix down another ~9% and Samsung ~7%. Two sessions, roughly seventeen percent of Korea's index value gone — against the best numbers the country's largest chipmaker has ever printed.