On July 14, iShares MSCI South Korea ETF (EWY) fell 5.26% overnight, trading at $159.72/share, with turnover of $297 million. The decline follows continued heavy selling in Korean equities, with the KOSPI index dropping another 5% and breaking below 6,500 points after the prior session's historic 8.95% plunge that triggered circuit breakers.

The selloff was ignited by a cascade of leveraged ETF forced liquidations rather than fundamental deterioration. Goldman Sachs characterized the crash as a \"liquidity-driven position washout,\" noting that leveraged ETF forced selling accounted for 62% of institutional net sales, with foreign and domestic institutions collectively dumping over $26 billion. SK Hynix plunged 15.37% on July 13 — its largest single-day drop on record — after its Q2 operating profit estimate of 60.4 trillion KRW came in 8% below consensus. Samsung Electronics fell 10.70%.

Adding to the pressure, Korean central bank data showed June foreign net investment outflows hit the largest single-month level on record at $30.5 billion, while the market widely expects a rate hike announcement at the July 16 monetary policy meeting.

The fund generally invests at least 80% of its assets in the component securities of the MSCI Korea Index, a free float-adjusted market capitalization-weighted index designed to measure the performance of the large- and mid-cap 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.)