semiconductors

According to Daum, the South Korean stock market has recently experienced increased volatility, with investors' risk appetite significantly cooling, and funds are flowing back from the stock market to safer assets such as banks. Due to adjustments in the semiconductor sector and stricter regulations on leveraged investments, the funds waiting to be invested in the South Korean stock market are rapidly withdrawing, leading to a phenomenon of "reverse capital migration."Data shows that by the end of July, the balance of time deposits at the five major banks in South Korea (KB Kookmin, Shinhan, Hana, Woori, NH Nonghyup) reached 973.49 trillion won, an increase of 24.09 trillion won compared to the end of the previous month, marking the largest monthly increase this year.There has also been a noticeable contraction in funds around the stock market. Data from the Korea Financial Investment Association shows that the deposits in investors' securities accounts (funds waiting to be invested in stock trading) reached a historical high of 139.69 trillion won on June 4, but had fallen to 107.20 trillion won by July 28, a decrease of over 32 trillion won in less than two months. The balance of credit trading financing, which represents the scale of market financing transactions, also dropped to 33.19 trillion won during the same period, down approximately 4.5 trillion won from the peak of 37.72 trillion won recorded on July 2, a decrease of about 12%.

According to CNBC, Situational Awareness, an AI-themed hedge fund founded by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner, sold its entire publicly traded stock portfolio in a single transaction to another hedge fund before the market opened on Thursday, with the buyer undisclosed. The fund also sold a significant stake in Anthropic. The fund manages approximately $20 billion to $24 billion, and as of the end of June, it had a net return of 439%, making it one of the best-performing hedge funds this year.According to insiders, this liquidation was due to significant losses in recent weeks. The fund had long positions in AI infrastructure and semiconductor stocks such as SK Hynix, Nvidia, Micron, and CoreWeave, most of which fell over 35% this month, while its short positions in software stocks like Adobe also experienced significant reverse volatility. According to its 13F filing submitted on March 31, about 62% of its $13.68 billion holdings were bearish options betting on declines in semiconductor and tech stocks. It is reported that major brokers such as Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan are assisting the fund in meeting margin calls or orderly reducing positions, and Aschenbrenner has sought new capital from existing investors and lenders.

According to Jinshi reports, Samsung Electronics' semiconductor division reported that its profits have increased by more than 250 times due to the reliance of artificial intelligence on memory. The division's operating profit for the second quarter was 89.2 trillion won (approximately 62 billion USD), exceeding analysts' average expectation of 79.3 trillion won.The group's overall net profit was 71.3 trillion won, also surpassing market expectations.

On July 29, according to WEEX TradFi market data, funds continue to gather in the technology and consumer sectors. Among them, the semiconductor and software sectors performed actively, with SOXS rising over 13.02% in 24 hours, FIGMA rising 6.21%, ADBE rising 5.40%, and CRM rising 4.46%; in the large consumer sector, KO rose 6.08% and PEP rose 3.74%; in the financial payment sector, PYPL rose 4.07% and MA rose 3.71%. WEEX Labs believes that after a significant pullback in the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index on the previous trading day, a recovery has occurred, combined with the Federal Reserve's interest rate decision and the concentrated release of large tech company earnings reports, funds have begun to reposition around performance expectations and event-driven strategies. Currently, WEEX's "TradFi Trading Carnival Season" is underway.

According to Jinshi, the Bank of England is investigating the rapid growth of investment banks operating in London with exposure to Asian stocks, as officials hope to avoid highly concentrated bets on a few companies related to artificial intelligence.Hedge funds and other institutional investors are rushing to invest in companies providing key infrastructure for the artificial intelligence semiconductor industry in Asia, such as SK Hynix and TSMC. The Bank of England is concerned that these stocks are gradually becoming an increasingly important part of the positions held by major brokers, with holdings highly concentrated in a few companies.

According to Gate market data, U.S. chip stocks have declined, with the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index currently down about 5%. Among them, AMD fell over 8%, NVIDIA dropped over 7%, and Intel decreased nearly 4%.

Recently, global growth sectors have remained active in trading, with the semiconductor, quantum computing, and technology-themed ETF sectors performing well. Market funds continue to focus on high-growth assets. According to data from the Gate platform, AXTIG/USDT (AXT Semiconductor) is currently priced at $49.04, up 4.38% in 24 hours; QNTG/USDT (Quantinuum) is currently priced at $55.55, up 3.46% in 24 hours; SNXXG/USDT (SanDisk 2x Long ETF) is currently priced at $15.169, up 3.13% in 24 hours.Gate gStocks adopts a 1:1 fully-backed native stock reserve mechanism, where each tokenized security corresponds to an equal number of native stocks as underlying asset support, and supports 24/7 trading, unified account management, and a minimum investment of 1 USDT with fractional share trading.Users can participate more flexibly in global popular stock investments, achieving a one-stop allocation of digital assets and traditional securities. As the ecosystem of tokenized securities continues to enrich, Gate gStocks will continue to expand more quality stocks and ETF targets, providing users with a more diverse choice of global asset allocation.

KB Financial Group announced the establishment of the "KB National Growth Unicorn Scale-up Fund," with a scale of 150 billion Korean won (approximately 108 million USD), fully funded by the group's subsidiaries' own capital, and managed by the KB Securities PE Growth Investment Division. The fund will focus on investing in companies in fields such as AI, semiconductors, secondary batteries, aerospace, mobile transportation, robotics, and biotechnology, aiming to cultivate unicorn companies in cutting-edge strategic industries.This decision was finalized at the "4th Productive Financial Consultation Meeting" held on July 24. KB Financial also formulated a financial support plan in line with the government's "three major super projects," covering support for semiconductors, power infrastructure investment, and physical AI companies and AI data centers. KB Financial plans to focus on discovering local innovative small and medium-sized enterprises through the CIB center and promote a shift in corporate evaluation culture from traditional financial statements and historical performance orientation to a evaluation system based on technological strength and future growth potential.

According to sources cited by the Financial Times, Chinese regulators are considering tightening export controls on AI and semiconductor technology. The Ministry of Commerce has discussed with AI companies such as Alibaba, ByteDance, and Zhipu about restricting the transfer of key data used for model training overseas, as well as limiting foreign users from downloading model weights. However, China will still allow overseas customers to access these models and services. The Ministry of Commerce is also soliciting opinions from various parties on potential restrictive measures, which would prohibit overseas chip manufacturers like Qualcomm and TSMC from producing advanced semiconductors based on designs developed by companies such as Huawei, Alibaba, and ByteDance.Sources indicate that most proposals are still under discussion, and regulators are assessing industry feedback before making a final decision.

According to ChaoXiang Research, Morgan Stanley's stock strategy report on July 20 pointed out that AI-related stocks have faced fierce selling in recent weeks, with the South Korean stock market dropping 25% from its peak, and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index falling 20%. Individual stocks like Samsung and Micron have seen declines between 20% and 50%. The report believes that the core driving force behind this round of decline is technical factors and position clearing, with no deterioration in fundamentals. The gap between relative prices and relative earnings trends in semiconductors continues to widen, but the supply-demand tight balance for DRAM and NAND is expected to last until 2028. DRAM spot prices remain high, and Micron has also raised its performance guidance, indicating that supply-demand tightness will last at least until 2027. The RSI of the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index is nearing the oversold zone, and the accumulated momentum gains for the year have basically been retraced.Morgan Stanley believes that once the oversold signal is confirmed, a rebound window will open, and it suggests that investors gradually position themselves in semiconductors during the summer. The proportion of second-quarter earnings reports exceeding expectations reached 97%, and companies in the S&P 500 that reported better-than-expected earnings outperformed the market by an average of 1.7 percentage points on the day of the report. In terms of allocation, Morgan Stanley has raised its equity allocation from 60% to 65%, increased its Eurozone allocation from 8.7% to 11%, and is overweight in sectors such as semiconductors, mining, capital goods, automotive, insurance, and banking, while underweighting software, business services, and media in the "AI erosion group." Regarding geopolitical conflicts, the report believes that the "buying on dips" strategy since the end of March remains effective.

Recently, the market has focused on the performance of the technology and semiconductor sectors, with trading activity in related assets continuing to rise. Gate gStocks quotes show that SOXLG (3x Long Semiconductor ETF) is currently priced at $139.46, up 3.40%; INTCG (Intel) is currently priced at $96.36, up 3.20%.Gate gStocks adopts a 1:1 fully-backed native stock reserve mechanism, where each tokenized security corresponds to an equal number of native stocks as underlying asset support, and supports 24/7 trading, unified account management, and a minimum investment of 1 USDT with fractional share trading. Users can participate more flexibly in global popular stock investments, achieving a one-stop allocation of digital assets and traditional securities. As the ecosystem of tokenized securities continues to enrich, Gate gStocks will continue to expand more quality stocks and ETF targets, providing users with a more diverse selection of global asset allocation options.

According to Gate market data, South Korea's semiconductor leader SK Hynix (000660) is currently priced at $1245.42, down 11.52%; Samsung Electronics (005930) is currently priced at $172.47, down 8.76%, with the semiconductor sector overall weakening. According to CoinGlass data, the SKHYNIX contract open interest on the Gate platform reached $26.36 million, with a 24-hour trading volume of $56.49 million; the SAMSUNG contract open interest reached $2.67 million, with a 24-hour trading volume of $5.40 million, with related indicators ranking among the industry's top.

According to South Korean media EToday, the South Korean government announced the "2026 Economic Growth Strategy for the Second Half of the Year," declaring that it will accelerate the advancement of three major "super projects": semiconductors, AI data centers, and physical AI, and plans to enhance industrial competitiveness through the construction of blockchain and digital asset ecosystems.According to the plan, South Korea aims to double its storage chip production capacity within the next five years and launch an AI chatbot and a unified AI education platform for the public in the second half of this year. Notably, the South Korean government proposed to advance large-scale demonstration projects for blockchain and digital asset ecosystems in the second half of this year and to initiate a pilot project for the tokenization of government bonds based on blockchain, exploring the linkage with the central bank's institutional CBDC to promote the upgrade of financial infrastructure. In addition, South Korea also plans to establish strategic investment accounts and a national growth fund to expand long-term capital support for strategic industries such as artificial intelligence, quantum technology, security, and blockchain.

According to a report by 10x Research, Bitcoin mining stocks have largely decoupled from Bitcoin price trends and have experienced a pullback of about 20%.The report states that Bitcoin mining companies are currently deeply tied to the AI theme, which is more focused on global supply chains and competition rather than crypto adoption or financial digitization. Additionally, the performance of Chinese LLM concept stocks and the outlook for the South Korean semiconductor supply chain are directly impacting the trends of Bitcoin mining stocks.Data from the image shows that the stock price trend of RIOT has become more synchronized with the Semi SOX ETF since April 2026, with both recently retreating from their highs, indicating that the performance of Bitcoin mining stocks is being influenced by the sentiment in the semiconductor and AI computing power chain.