Korea’s KOSPI jumped 7.01% to 7,284.41 after a softer US CPI print eased Fed tightening fears, tripping buy sidecars on both exchanges. Foreign investors bought roughly $1.6 billion of KOSPI shares, but the index remains about 14% below its June 30 level.
The KOSPI rebounded 0.73% to 6,856.83 as foreign and institutional buyers scooped up semiconductor stocks after Monday’s 8.95% crash, while the KOSDAQ sank to a fresh year low. The Bank of Korea decides rates on Thursday.
Korea slows a crashing market in three layers: sidecars pause program trading at a 5% futures move, circuit breakers halt everything at index drops of 8%, 15%, and 20%, and volatility interruptions cool single stocks. Here is how each trigger works, in what order they fire, and how to read the flow data around a halt.
Korea’s KOSPI plunged 8.95% to 6,806.93 on Monday, triggering the year’s seventh circuit breaker, as SK hynix fell 15.4% and Samsung Electronics 10.7% on Middle East tensions and a leveraged-ETF flow shock.
The KOSPI rose 2.52% and the KOSDAQ jumped 5.47% as a US chip rally and seven-times-oversubscribed demand for SK hynix’s Nasdaq ADR listing fired up sentiment, triggering buy-side sidecars. Institutions bought the dip while retail and foreign investors sold.
The KOSPI closed up 0.62% at 7,291.91 after an extreme intraday swing of roughly 480 points. SK hynix surged 5.3% on US ADR listing hopes while institutions absorbed about $880 million of retail selling.
SK hynix lists on the Nasdaq on July 10 as SKHY in the largest-ever US stock sale by a foreign company. The view from Seoul: a stock that tripled in six months, a W28 trillion foreign selling streak that just flipped, and what the ADR changes for the KOSPI-listed shares.
Weekly KOSPI foreign investor net-buying, updated every week: the last 8 weeks of foreign, institutional and retail flows in won, and how to read them.
Samsung just reported an 89.4 trillion won quarterly operating profit – the largest in corporate history – and the stock crashed anyway. The KOSPI closed at 7,246.79 on July 8, down 20.5% in twelve trading days. Here is what the data actually says about Korea’s July 2026 selloff.