On July 1, iShares MSCI South Korea ETF (EWY) fell 5.1% in pre-market trading, trading at $191.79/share, with turnover of $36.50 million. The decline reflects intensifying pressure on the Korean equity market from multiple fronts.
On the news front, the Korean won plunged to 1559.10 per dollar, its weakest since 2009, while foreign investors net sold a record 7.7 trillion won of KOSPI stocks in a single session earlier this week. Cumulatively, overseas investors have dumped 148.3 trillion won of Korean equities year-to-date. The KOSPI index triggered circuit breakers twice within one week, with intraday drops exceeding 8%, as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix both fell over 10% at their lows. Koreas financial regulator announced plans to tighten leverage ETF and margin trading rules amid a $50 billion buildup in leveraged products linked to Korean stocks.
Additionally, Apple and Microsofts AI-driven device price increases have raised concerns about demand elasticity for memory chips, prompting a broad repricing of semiconductor stocks across Asia.
The fund generally invests at least 80% of its assets in the component securities of its underlying index, designed to measure the performance of the large- and mid-capitalization segments of the Korean equity market.
(The above content is based on publicly available market information, generated by a program or algorithm, and is intended solely as a stock movement alert. It does not constitute investment advice or a basis for trading decisions.)