--- title: "Korea funds rose 4% Monday, well ahead of Seoul" url: "https://etf.net/news/korea-funds-rise-4-outpace-seoul-2026-10-19" published_at: "2026-10-19T21:05:07.033Z" updated_at: "2026-10-19T21:05:07.033Z" byline: "ETF.net Research" --- # Korea funds rose 4% Monday, well ahead of Seoul SK hynix rose 4.7% on Nasdaq after a 0.4% gain in Seoul. Amazon jumped 5%, utilities fell 2%, and Indonesia fell again. By ETF.net Research. Published Oct 19, 2026. 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. 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 DRAM, whose largest memory positions are Samsung, SK hynix and Micron, rose 4.0%. The iShares Semiconductor ETF SOXX 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. EWY is down 8% over the five sessions through Monday, and the Kospi is down 9.7%. SOXX is down 7.9%. Chart: Monday's bounce left both funds **short** of last week's start ## 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. Chart: Utilities fell **2%**, the most of any sector fund ## 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%. Chart: **EIDO** fell to a 52-week low in two sessions 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. Source: etf.net, https://etf.net/news/korea-funds-rise-4-outpace-seoul-2026-10-19. Please cite the page URL.