On July 29, iShares MSCI South Korea ETF declined 5.04% in regular trading, trading at $143.41/share, with turnover of $3.205 billion. The sell-off was driven by SK Hynix reporting Q2 results that missed market expectations, triggering capitulation selling across Korean equities.

Storage giant SK Hynix posted Q2 revenue of 79.32 trillion won, below the consensus estimate of 84 trillion won, while operating profit of 60.54 trillion won also fell short of the expected 64 trillion won. Despite year-over-year growth of 257% in revenue and 557% in operating profit, the miss ignited a massive sell-off. SK Hynix plunged over 17%, its largest single-day decline on record, while Samsung Electronics fell more than 10%. Together, the two chipmakers account for over 50% of the KOSPI index weighting.

The KOSPI index dropped as much as 13% intraday, triggering circuit breakers for the second consecutive trading day — a first in Korean market history. Retail investors net sold 1.9 trillion won of KOSPI stocks, marking a sharp reversal from prior dip-buying behavior. Concerns over the sustainability of AI infrastructure spending further compounded selling pressure.

The fund generally invests at least 80% of its assets in the component securities of 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 fund is non-diversified.

(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.)