Korea funds rose 4% Monday, well ahead of Seoul

U.S. funds holding South Korean stocks rose about 4% on Monday, more than two percentage points ahead of Seoul's Kospi, which had already closed before New York opened.

The iShares MSCI South Korea ETF CEWY rose 4.1% to $156.58. Franklin Templeton's Franklin FTSE South Korea ETF BFLKR rose 4.0% to $51.94. South Korea's Kospi closed up 1.8%, at 5,768.01.

Samsung Electronics and SK hynix together are 44% of CEWY. In Seoul, Samsung rose 1.2% and SK hynix rose 0.4%. After that close, SK hynix's Nasdaq listing rose 4.7%, to $142.87. New York's price for the same company ran far ahead of the close Seoul had already set.

Sandisk and Micron Technology, which trade in the U.S., rose 5.5% to $1,371 and 3% to $905. Roundhill Investments' Roundhill Memory ETF CDRAM, whose largest memory positions are Samsung, SK hynix and Micron, rose 4.0%. The iShares Semiconductor ETF ASOXX rose 1.8%.

Memory-chip stocks took a beating last week, The Wall Street Journal reported, when fears about Chinese competition added to jitters around artificial intelligence. CoreWeave, the Nvidia-backed firm that rents out computing for that build-out, finished the week about a quarter lower. The Journal said it sat at the center of fears about how much borrowing is paying for the build-out.

On Monday traders pared back bets that tech firms chasing the artificial-intelligence build-out had overextended themselves, the Journal reported.

The week is still a loss. CEWY is down 8% over the five sessions through Monday, and the Kospi is down 9.7%. ASOXX is down 7.9%.

The gain sat in the largest companies

The State Street SPDR S&P 500 ETF ASPY rose 0.4%. The Invesco AQQQ Trust, Series 1 AQQQ rose 1.2%. The Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight ETF BRSP fell 0.3%.

A holder of the S&P 500 in its usual form, with the largest companies counting most, was up. A holder of the same index with every company at the same weight was down. The two finished about three-quarters of a percentage point apart.

Amazon rose 5% to $262.45 after Morgan Stanley named it a top pick and raised its price target to $350 from $335. Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak projected 47% revenue growth in 2027 at Amazon Web Services, Amazon's cloud business.

"We continue to think AWS's growth and profit runway is under-appreciated," Nowak wrote.

Amazon's sector fund, the State Street Consumer Discretionary Select Sector SPDR ETF AXLY, rose 1.8%.

Utilities were the weakest sector

The State Street Utilities Select Sector SPDR ETF AXLU fell 2% to $41.36, the worst of the S&P 500 sector funds.

Indonesia fell on an MSCI warning

The iShares MSCI Indonesia ETF CEIDO fell 3.3% to $9.61, a 52-week low. Jakarta's benchmark fell 3.6% to 4,996, its lowest close in six years. Friday had already cut the fund 14.9% and the index 11.6%.

The selling followed a warning from MSCI, which builds indexes many global funds track. On Oct. 15, MSCI said Indonesia's classification as an emerging market was no longer appropriate and opened a consultation on moving the country to standalone status, outside those indexes.

MSCI will decide by June 30, 2027. Goldman Sachs estimates a full removal could trigger $5.6 billion of selling by funds that have to follow the indexes.

The iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF BEEM rose 0.7%. The loss stayed in Indonesia.