JAPANESE STOCKS JUST ENTERED A TECHNICAL CORRECTION:
The Nikkei 225 dropped -4% on Friday, now more than -10% below its June 25 peak, marking a technical correction and its worst weekly loss since April 2025. The broader Topix fell -2.7%, with Tokyo Electron alone contributing the most to the decline after sliding -8.2%. Market breadth was weak, with 810 stocks falling versus 788 rising and 39 unchanged. This comes as investors grow increasingly concerned that AI-related capex is outpacing returns, after Taiwan Semiconductor, $TSM, fell despite raising both its spending and revenue targets, mirroring Samsung's selloff earlier this month despite beating earnings estimates. Kioxia Holdings led the losses, plunging -16%, its biggest one-day drop since November 2025. Its market capitalization has now been cut in half in just one month after briefly becoming Japan's most valuable company. AI euphoria across semiconductor sector is unwinding rapidly. Source: Global Markets Investor
South Korea's KOSPI stock market trading has been halted for 20 minutes after crashing -8%.
Over ₩488,000,000,000,000 ($328 BILLION) has been wiped out from South Korean stocks today. Source: Bull Theory
Massive Reversal in Asian Markets
Over $500 BILLION has been added to Asian stocks today as semiconductor and AI stocks rebounded after the recent sell-off, following a strong close on U.S. stocks. South Korea's KOSPI is up +4.6%, adding ₩280.6 trillion ($189B). Japan's NIKKEI is up +1.6%, adding ¥22.9 trillion ($139B). Taiwan is up +1.2%, adding NT4.1 trillion ($50B). China's SSE is up +0.8%, adding ¥520 billion ($73B). Hong Kong's HSI is up +1.5%, adding HK$131.6 billion ($17B). India's NIFTY is up +1.0%, adding ₹4.9 trillion ($57B). Source: Bull Theory
🚨 BLOODBATH continues in South Korean and Japanese markets.
Over $400 BILLION has been wiped out from South Korean and Japanese stock markets today as the sell-off in semiconductor and tech stocks continues. South Korea's KOSPI closed down -5.35%, wiping out ₩326,350,000,000,000 ($219 BILLION). Japan's NIKKEI closed down -2.11%, wiping out over ¥30,173,000,000,000 ($184 BILLION). Over $850 BILLION has been wiped out from both markets in just two days. Source: Bull Theory @BullTheoryio
🚨 Samsung just delivered a reality check for the AI trade.
Its quarterly operating profit surged, powered by booming AI memory demand and higher DRAM prices. Analysts still expect memory shortages to persist through 2027. Yet the stock fell. Why? Because in today's market, good isn't good enough when perfection is already priced in. This marks an important shift. The first phase of the AI boom was driven by the obvious bottlenecks: semiconductors, memory, and AI infrastructure. Capital poured into the same names. Nvidia led. The semiconductor index soared. Now those trades are crowded. The fundamentals remain strong, but investors are asking a different question: Can earnings keep exceeding already sky-high expectations? AI isn't over. But the easy money from owning the obvious AI winners may be. Source: Bloomberg, James E. Thorne @DrJStrategy
South Korea's KOSPI has crashed -6% from today's high as foreign investors continue to sell ahead of Samsung's earnings report.
Foreign investors sold ₩2,200,000,000,000 worth of Korean stocks today, marking their 11th consecutive day of net selling. Their cumulative net sales have now reached ₩157.3 trillion ($116 billion) since 2026. Samsung is set to release its Q2 earnings on July 7, with Q2 operating profit expected to surge 18x. Source: Bull Theory
Japanese Yen will collapse to 165 against the U.S. Dollar, its weakest level since 1986, warns Goldman Sachs
Source: Barchart, Bloomberg
A possible catalyst for bitcoin?
South Korean retail investors were once among Bitcoin's biggest marginal buyers. Those flows have largely disappeared as speculation shifted toward domestic equities, particularly high-beta names such as SK Hynix and Samsung amid the KOSPI rally. If that speculative capital starts rotating out of Korean equities, could some of it find its way back into crypto? It may be too early to say, but a reversal in the KOSPI is one potential catalyst we're watching closely. Source: TME
