Korean equity ETFs opened sharply lower on Friday, with leveraged products tracking major tech giants suffering steep declines. The Southern East SK Hynix Daily Leverage 2x Product (07709) fell 13.29% to HK$37.18, while the Southern Double Long Samsung Electronics (07747) dropped 8.26% to HK$67.04 at the time of writing.

On September 14, the Korean stock market opened with significant losses, as the KOSPI index slid over 3%. Individual stocks were hit hard, with SK Hynix dropping nearly 6% and Samsung Electronics falling more than 3%.

The sell-off comes amid growing industry unease following a series of runaway incidents and doomsday warnings. In a rare show of unity, the leaders of Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX have joined forces to urge a slowdown in artificial intelligence development. Market participants widely anticipate that a deceleration in AI advancements by these three major players could reduce capital expenditures on training next-generation super-large models, leading to lower demand expectations for high-end training chips.

Notably, in an effort to compete with the liquidity of major U.S. exchanges and expand trading opportunities for investors, the Korean stock market officially launched after-hours trading on September 14. Previously, Korean stocks were traded through call auction sessions in 10-minute intervals from 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM on trading days. Effective September 14, the old system has been abolished, replaced by continuous auction trading with extended trading hours.