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Korea Composite Stock Price Index falls 5.5% as the chip selloff spreads

Nasdaq-100 futures were lower and Dow futures higher on Tuesday morning as oil and Treasury yields eased, after US chip stocks fell on Monday.

Oct 13, 2026 · 3 min read · By ETF.net Research

Key takeaways

The Kospi fell 5.5% as the chip selloff spread.
Samsung and SK Hynix led the losses in Seoul.
A Chinese rival's memory plan helped trigger the selloff.
The Korea ETF slid again after the Seoul close.

The Korea Composite Stock Price Index fell 5.5% on Tuesday, in a chip selloff that had already hit US stocks on Monday. Before the open, Nasdaq-100 futures were down 0.6%, at 30,724, as of 6:45 a.m. Eastern. Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average were up 0.3%, at 52,266. S&P 500 futures were barely changed, at 7,851.

The Kospi closed at 6,035, with Samsung Electronics down 7.4% and SK Hynix down 10.1%. Japan's Nikkei 225 fell 1.8%, to 67,778. Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index rose 0.3%.

The Kospi had already fallen 3.7% on Monday, to 6,384. In the US that day, the Dow rose 0.4%, the Nasdaq-100 fell 0.7%, and the S&P 500 was flat.

Korean broadcaster SBS said Tuesday's drop was influenced by semiconductor stocks tumbling in the US, on Chinese memory makers catching up. ChangXin Memory Technologies aims to ship denser server memory by the end of 2026. President Cao Kanyu described the design on October 10 at a conference in Shanghai, Yicai reported.

Charu Chanana, a strategist at Saxo, told Reuters the ChangXin news was "a clear trigger for the selloff in memory stocks."

"A lot of investors have no clue what they are investing in," Broadcom chief executive Hock Tan said Monday at a conference in Singapore, Bloomberg reported. He likened those investors to gamblers in a casino.

Bloomberg tied the drop in Korean chip stocks to that warning and to the Chinese rival.

The iShares MSCI South Korea ETF EWY fell 4% in Monday's US session, after Seoul had already closed. By 7:06 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday the fund was down another 3.7% from Monday's close.

The VanEck Semiconductor ETF SMH was down 1.8% from Monday's close, after a 2% drop in the regular session. The Invesco QQQ Trust QQQ was down 0.6% from Monday's close, in line with the Nasdaq-100 futures, after falling 0.7% on Monday.

EWY fell farther than chip and Nasdaq funds through Monday

US session closes through Monday, Oct. 12, 2026

2026-10-052026-10-12

EWY · 170.11
SMH · 590.99
QQQ · 746.04

EWY dropped 11% over the week; SMH dropped 7%.

London's FTSE 100 was up 0.6% as of 6:31 a.m. Eastern, and Germany's DAX Performance Index was up 0.5% as of 6:46 a.m. Reuters said lower oil prices were supporting European shares even as technology stocks stayed under pressure.

West Texas Intermediate crude was at $91.74 a barrel, down 2.1%, and Brent crude was at $104.54, down 2%, as of 7:06 a.m. Eastern. The United States Oil Fund USO was down 1.7% in premarket trading from Monday's close, a smaller move than the crude price, after rising 1.9% on Monday.

Treasury yields fell as cash trading resumed after the US bond market's Columbus Day closure on Monday. The Wall Street Journal reported the 10-year yield down 5.5 basis points, at 5.189%, helped by cheaper oil and the pullback in AI stocks. That is below last week's 24-year high of 5.365%, Dow Jones reported. US inflation figures for September are due Wednesday at 8:30 a.m. Eastern.

UnitedHealth, the health insurer, raised its adjusted full-year outlook to at least $20.50 a share, from a range of $19.50 to $20. The shares were up 2.2% in premarket trading from Monday's close.

JPMorgan Chase reported third-quarter net income of $15.3 billion, or $5.57 a share, up from $14.4 billion, or $5.07, a year earlier. The shares were down 2.5% in premarket trading from Monday's close, ahead of an 8:30 a.m. Eastern call. Bloomberg reported a surprise drop in fixed-income trading revenue, the first such decline in more than two years.