South Korean Stocks Plunge 7.7% as Samsung and SK Hynix Tumble
SEOUL — South Korea's stock market fell sharply on October 15, with the benchmark Kospi index closing down 7.7 percent at 5,548.78, according to multiple financial media reports, after a deepening sell-off in technology shares triggered a brief sidecar trading halt during the session. The declines followed losses on Wall Street after hotter-than-expected U.S. inflation data.
Samsung Electronics slid 9.5 percent and memory chipmaker SK Hynix plunged 11.4 percent, the reports said. Elsewhere in Asia, Japan's Nikkei 225 tumbled 4.8 percent to 64,489.06, with SoftBank Group down 9.4 percent, Tokyo Electron down 7.3 percent and Kioxia down 11.2 percent. On Wall Street the previous day, the S&P 500 dropped 1.1 percent and the Nasdaq composite slipped 1.9 percent, with Nvidia down 3.2 percent and AMD down 5.7 percent.
The sell-off followed U.S. data released on October 14 showing consumer prices rose 3.7 percent year on year in September, up from 3.4 percent in August and above economists' expectations. South Korea's president had earlier signalled a rate hike may be unavoidable as the yield gap with the United States widens, with the central bank planning to maintain a restrictive stance amid persistent inflation. The Kospi had crossed the 9,000 mark in June at an all-time high driven by optimism over super intelligence.
(Sources: Reuters, Euronews, The Hindu BusinessLine and other financial media)
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: Basile Morin／CC BY-SA 4.0（Wikimedia Commons）
