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 EWY rose 4.1% to $156.58. Franklin Templeton's Franklin FTSE South Korea ETF FLKR 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 EWY. 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, recovering part of a 6.6% drop on Friday that came after Seoul had closed. Seoul took that drop at Monday's open and made it back by its close.

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 DRAM, whose largest memory positions are Samsung, SK hynix and Micron, rose 4.0%. The iShares Semiconductor ETF SOXX rose 1.7%.

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. EWY is down 8% over the five sessions through Monday, and the Kospi is down 9.7%. SOXX is down 7.9%.

The gain sat in the largest companies

The State Street SPDR S&P 500 ETF SPY rose 0.4%. The Invesco QQQ Trust, Series 1 QQQ rose 1.2%. The Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight ETF RSP 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 XLY, rose 1.8%.

Utilities were the weakest sector

The State Street Utilities Select Sector SPDR ETF XLU 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 EIDO 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 EEM rose 0.7%. The loss stayed in Indonesia.