Inside KOSPI

[Inside KOSPI @InsideKOSPI_]

Everyone in Seoul says foreigners control KOSPI. My data says something stranger.

Foreigners net sold ₩112tn over five months. KOSPI rose almost 70% anyway.

But on the day it fell 10.8%, they sold ₩4.5tn. They set the speed, not the direction. https://t.co/3kgcK9d6W5

[Mellie Mel @MellieMelvc58]

Incase you were wondering:

Mag 7 vs. S&P

[Inside KOSPI @InsideKOSPI_]

SK Hynix today, by share count. Retail -111,515. Foreign -211,398. Institutions about -310,000. Everyone sold. The stock closed up 1.27%. Its own ₩40tn buyback is running at 27% of daily volume.
#KOSPI $EWY $SKHY

https://t.co/DsJZH2r4Gb

https://t.co/hYbG2fXbos

[Inside KOSPI @InsideKOSPI_]

The Japan angle is about power more than customers.

Korea can build the fab. What it cannot do quickly is get that kind of load onto the grid, and Yongin has already shown how many years that takes. Japan has spare capacity and a government willing to move on it.

Worth noting the timing though. Hynix is down 2.5% here today and the board is almost entirely red on the Warsh read. Committing that much capex into a tape like this says more about their demand curve than about the share price.

[Inside KOSPI @InsideKOSPI_]

The cleanest expression of that is in Asia this morning rather than in the long end.

KOSPI is down about 2% at 6,656 with 719 decliners against 160 advances. Nikkei similar. Korea already hiked to 3.00% last Thursday, two days before the speech, and the won still weakened today.

A central bank tightens ahead of the Fed and gets no currency relief for it. That is the market telling you the dollar bid is not about relative rates right now.

[Inside KOSPI @InsideKOSPI_]

They did not leave. They flipped sides.

The 2x Hynix single stock ETF traded 123bn won today, about half of what it did Thursday. Meanwhile KODEX Inverse and the 200 futures inverse 2x are sitting at ranks 6 and 7 by turnover right now, 551bn and 471bn won, both green while the index is down 2%.

Same accounts, opposite direction. The deposit and education rules screen out new entrants more than they remove anyone already certified.

The Windows only course is real though. Everyone here who trades these has sat through it.

[Inside KOSPI @InsideKOSPI_]

SK Hynix's ₩40T buyback is running at ~2x the required pace: ₩7.6T in the first 7 sessions, 19% of the program in 11% of the window. At this rate it's done by mid-October. Then this bid disappears.

#SKHynix #KOSPI #Semiconductors

[Inside KOSPI @InsideKOSPI_]

KOSPI -1.8%. Foreigners and institutions net sold ₩2.5T ahead of Warsh's Jackson Hole debut; retail bought the dip.

The real bid isn't retail though. Samsung & Hynix buybacks. ₩10T in 7 sessions. The floor under this market is the chaebols buying their own stock.
#KOSPI $EWY

[Inside KOSPI @InsideKOSPI_]

Not in the print. The one I would flag sits in the order book on the supply side.

Korea traded this print and gave it all back today. Hynix opened 1,776,000, low 1,708,000, closed 1,730,000. Individuals, foreigners and institutions all finished net sellers. The only net buyer in the name was the company itself, through its own buyback.

The demand you just read is real. The people who have to build it are being bid up by their own treasury desk right now, and that is a thinner floor than it looks on the tape.

Side note because this always comes up when I post Korean tickers: "Samsung" is roughly ten listed companies and only one of them makes the memory. I wrote the map out here. https://t.co/PXYWvasteC

[Inside KOSPI @InsideKOSPI_]

A colleague asked me which Samsung is the real Samsung. He had searched, found more than ten of them, and I answered "that's just how it is."

Then I realized I could not explain it. So I wrote it out properly.

Part 4: The Family Tree. https://t.co/ekGXjsvBnV

[Inside KOSPI @InsideKOSPI_]

You went into the 10-Q so here is the matching oddity from the supply side today.

Nvidia being supply constrained is a sentence about HBM allocation, and that gets committed in Icheon and Pyeongtaek well in advance. Korea opened on exactly that. Then the Bank of Korea hiked to 3.00% at 10am, second consecutive, and the tape rolled over. Hynix 1,776,000 open, 1,708,000 low, 1,730,000 close.

Final flows had every category net selling. The only buyer of Hynix today was Hynix.

[Inside KOSPI @InsideKOSPI_]

One thing worth adding before you extrapolate the memory read-through.

Korea traded your conclusion this morning and then unwound it. Hynix opened 1,776,000, foreign flow turned positive early, and then the Bank of Korea hiked to 3.00% at 10am. Close was 1,730,000 with individuals, foreigners and institutions all net sellers on the day.

The demand story is intact. What moved the suppliers today was the local policy rate, not the transcript.

[Inside KOSPI @InsideKOSPI_]

The supply side had its own strange day here.

Korea opened hard on this print and then the Bank of Korea hiked at 10am, so everything stalled. Hynix gave the whole move back, 1,776,000 open down to 1,730,000 close.

Every investor category finished a net seller. The buyback was the bid. So the read-through was real for about an hour and then the local policy rate ate it.

[Inside KOSPI @InsideKOSPI_]

Watched that read-through land here in real time today and it went sideways for a reason nobody outside Korea is pricing.

Hynix opened 1,776,000 on your exact thesis and foreign buying ran positive early. Then at 10am the Bank of Korea hiked to 3.00%, second month running. The tape went quiet and bled to 1,708,000 before closing 1,730,000.

By the bell individuals, foreigners and institutions were all net sellers. The only buyer was Hynix buying its own stock.

Best memory headline in a year and the domestic bid was a buyback. My own book is long Hynix so discount me accordingly.

[Inside KOSPI @InsideKOSPI_]

What held the bid was not a fund.

Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix bought ₩1.60tn of their own shares today. In Korea's flow data that lands in a column nobody quotes.

A seawall does not turn the tide. It only decides where the water stops, and this one comes down in November.

[Inside KOSPI @InsideKOSPI_]

Yesterday foreign investors dumped ₩3.81tn of Korean stock.

Today they sold ₩116bn. A 97% drop in one session, and KOSPI took back 6,800.

From a Seoul desk that does not read as buyers coming back. It reads as sellers pausing until Nvidia reports.

#KOSPI $EWY

[Inside KOSPI @InsideKOSPI_]

One more thing I got wrong when I started. A ticker ending in 5 instead of 0 is usually the preferred share.
005930 votes. 005935 pays a little more and does not.
Cheaper does not mean different company.

[Inside KOSPI @InsideKOSPI_]

A colleague asked me which Samsung is the real Samsung. He had searched, found more than ten of them, and I answered "that's just how it is."

Then I realized I could not explain it. So I wrote it out properly.

Part 4: The Family Tree. https://t.co/ekGXjsvBnV

[Inside KOSPI @InsideKOSPI_]

And every one of the big four groups has one giant with a long tail behind it.
Samsung Electronics alone is 1,526tn won. The next five listed Samsung affiliates put together are under 340tn.
That shape is most of what "I bought Samsung" hides.