On July 29, iShares MSCI South Korea ETF declined 5.41% overnight, trading at $143.3/share, with turnover of $248 million.

The decline was driven by a continued selloff in Korean equities amid escalating concerns over the sustainability of AI infrastructure spending. The KOSPI index fell an additional 4% on July 29, with SK Hynix dropping nearly 7% and Samsung Electronics falling over 2%, after the index had already plunged 10.84% on July 28 — triggering circuit breakers three times in a single session.

SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics together account for over 50% of KOSPI weighting, effectively transforming the Korean market into a semiconductor index. Korean retail investors who had heavily leveraged positions in chip stocks through CFDs faced margin calls and forced liquidations, creating cascading sell pressure. Korean financial regulators have considered introducing additional measures including individual investment caps to curb excessive leverage.

The fund generally invests at least 80% of its assets in the component securities of its underlying index, which is a free float-adjusted market capitalization-weighted index designed to measure the performance of the large- and mid-capitalization segments of the equity market in Korea.

(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.)