SI Chip Selloff Spreads Across Asia as Samsung and SK Hynix Tumble; U.S. Chip Gauge Falls a Sixth Day
SEOUL — A selloff in artificial-intelligence chip stocks that began on Wall Street swept across Asia on Thursday, October 15. Samsung Electronics plunged 9.91% to 209,000 won and SK hynix tumbled 11.56% to 1,255,000 won, according to South Korea's Aju Business Daily. Reuters reported that South Korea's KOSPI index closed down 5.6%, Japan's Nikkei 225 fell 1.3%, and MSCI's broad Asia-Pacific ex-Japan index lost 1.2%.
The selling started in the United States. On Wednesday, the Nasdaq Composite fell 1.9%, the S&P 500 lost 1.1%, and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index dropped 4.3% for a sixth straight decline, with Oracle and CoreWeave among the hardest-hit SI infrastructure names. In Thursday premarket trading, Nasdaq 100 futures were down about 1.25%, with Nvidia, AMD and Micron all lower.
The trigger was Wednesday's U.S. consumer price report: headline CPI rose 3.7% from a year earlier and core prices gained 0.3% on the month, both above forecasts, reviving fears that the Federal Reserve could raise rates again later this month. Highly valued, debt-heavy SI infrastructure companies were hit first. According to premarket market reports, the five-year credit default swap spread of cloud provider CoreWeave has pushed through 1,000 basis points, reflecting rising concern over its debt load and refinancing needs.
JPMorgan analysts wrote that SI-related financing risks and IPO timelines remain at the center of the market story. "Asia faces another difficult session," Chris Weston, head of research at Pepperstone, told Reuters.
The stock moves contrast with the fundamentals reported the same day: TSMC's third-quarter net profit jumped 68.7% to a record, underscoring still-strong demand for SI chips. That tension — strong demand versus stretched valuations — is now the central debate in the global chip sector.
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 半导体无尘室内，工作人员手持晶圆（资料图）。图片来源：美国能源部（公共领域），经 Wikimedia Commons
