On October 10, the KOSPI index closed at 3,610.60, with an intramarket high of 3,617.86 - both record numbers. South Korea’s main stock index has been on a tear, cracking the 3,500 line on October 2, just one trading day before the Chuseok 추석 holidays. Since the June election of President Lee Jae-myung 이재명, whose campaign pledges included the “KOSPI 5,000 Era”, the index has risen by more than 30%.
Leading the rally is Samsung Electronics 삼성전자, the longstanding leader recently pushed out of the spotlight by SK Hynix SK 하이닉스, thanks to the latter chipmaker’s dominance in the high bandwidth memory (HBM) chips used in artificial intelligence applications. (See previous coverage, “SK Hynix Overtakes Samsung.”)
But growing demand for DRAM and NAND flash memory, where Samsung is stronger, has pushed the momentum back to Samsung’s side. As of October 10, shares of Samsung Electronics were trading at KRW 94,440 per share, hitting a 52-week high and seemingly poised to crack into six-digit share prices. Morgan Stanley has raised its guidance for Samsung Electronics by 14%, to KRW 111,000 per share.
