MONEY RADAR
—
MARKET BRIEFING · KOREA

After record semiconductor earnings were confirmed, the KOSPI returned to where it stood two months ago, and shipping was the only industry that rose.

October 12, 2026 · Read the Korean original

Major indices

  • KOSPI 6,384.24 -3.65%
  • KOSDAQ 849.19 -4.83%

Coming back from a three-day holiday break, the market fell across the board, with the indexes and individual stocks moving the same way. The KOSPI closed 3.65% lower at 6384.24 and the KOSDAQ 4.83% lower at 849.19. On the KOSPI 187 stocks rose and 699 fell; on the KOSDAQ 310 rose and 1372 fell. Only 4 stocks set 252-session highs while 26 set new lows, making the day feel heavier than the index drop alone suggests.

By industry, shipping and logistics was effectively the only group holding the index up, and both heavy industry and growth names fell without distinction. In defense, nuclear power, power grid, EV batteries, hydrogen and robotics, not a single stock we track finished higher, and the deepest losses came in robotics and hydrogen, the two that had risen the most earlier this month. Among individual names, LG Innotek fell 16.17% as third-quarter earnings expectations were cut quickly, while Hanwha Machinery & Service Holdings rose 24.01% on news of a tender offer by president Kim Dong-sun, moving apart from the rest of the market. Industry moves and individual stocks are listed below.

Equities pointed toward reducing risk, but rates and the currency moved the other way, so the signals diverged. The won/dollar rate fell 1.2 won to 1,338.0, the three-year government bond yield dropped 6.2bp to 3.921% and the ten-year fell 8.9bp to 4.306%. With gold and silver both higher and idle cash pointing the same way, investor deposits stood at 100.3796 trillion won as of October 7, down 669.0 billion from the previous observation, and credit financing balances at 33.5167 trillion won, down 42.4 billion. KOSPI non-arbitrage program trading saw a five-session total of 5.4324 trillion won in net selling, so the pressure was not confined to a single day. Korea's weight in the MSCI Emerging Markets index was 20.73% as of October 9, down 1.16 percentage points in a week, while Taiwan's rose, meaning the center of gravity behind foreign trading is itself shifting.

This was a day when material that built up abroad during the three-day gap was absorbed all at once. News1 reported that the dispute over OpenAI's revenue scale that surfaced during the holiday, together with expectations of market share gains by China's ChangXin Memory Technologies, weighed on sentiment toward AI and semiconductors, and Economist noted that rising US Treasury yields and Middle East risk were added on top. According to Yonhap News, foreign investors sold a net 2 trillion won or more on the KOSPI, extending their selling to a fifth session. Where the money went was silver, gold and transport: the best-performing ETFs clustered in 1Q Silver Active and KODEX Transportation, and in shipping, expectations of higher freight rates lifted Pan Ocean and HMM. Even so, the industry that remains the leader on our chain scores is still semiconductors, which is where the day's returns and relative strength part ways. Within it, KC Tech gave back 8.55% of the two-day surge it had posted early this month.

The index closes and percentage moves were confirmed at the same values in several closing reports, and the government bond yields match between those reports and our own data. The exchange rate is on our own collected basis, so it may differ in the decimals from reported closes. The industry average moves and individual stock returns are values we calculated ourselves from closing prices. The reasons cited for the drop, weakening AI sentiment, concern over memory competition and freight rate expectations in shipping, are readings by brokerages and the press and appear hard to treat as settled. Because of disclosure lags, the MSCI weights are as of October 9 and US Treasury yields as of October 8, and investor deposits and credit financing balances as of October 7.

Watchlist stocks by industry

Shipping & logistics +2.88% · 3 of 4 up

Robotics & automation -10.74% · 0 of 5 up

Power infrastructure -6.75% · 0 of 12 up

EV batteries -5.71% · 0 of 13 up

Automotive -5.05% · 2 of 16 up

Semiconductors -4.78% · 1 of 43 up

Sources (Korean-language)

This market briefing was compiled by AI from this site's own price and filing data together with public news reports, and translated from the Korean original. Please check the sources below before relying on it.

← All articles