Overview
- On Monday, Sept. 7, the KOSPI rose about 4.6 percent as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix led heavy buying that pushed the index to a more than five-week high.
- Goldman Sachs reaffirmed a 12‑month KOSPI target of 12,000 based on forecasts of outsized 2026 earnings for Korean tech firms and projections that US big-tech AI capital spending will exceed $1.2 trillion in 2027.
- Industry data showed a sharp DRAM rebound with TrendForce reporting Q2 2026 revenue of $154.73 billion, up 59.5 percent quarter-on-quarter, and brokers reported inventories at major Korean firms have fallen to historically low levels.
- The rally is concentrated in a small group of memory leaders that together hold roughly two thirds of the global DRAM market and a dominant share of KOSPI market capitalization, which magnifies index moves and valuation risk.
- Key things to watch are whether AI capex plans and earnings upgrades materialize, how DRAM and HBM prices move as supply shifts to HBM4, and the impact of Chinese capacity expansion and broader macro or geopolitical shocks on the cycle.