On the morning of May 11th, the main stock index of South Korea showed a strong upward trend after the opening. The major weight stocks of the market collectively exerted force to push up the market, leading to a significant overall increase.
On the morning of May 11th, the main stock index of South Korea showed a strong upward trend after the opening. The major weight stocks of the market collectively exerted force to push up the market, leading to a significant overall increase. South Korea's capital market once again became the focus of attention in the Asian regional capital markets.
From the perspective of the market operation, the Korean Composite Index (KOSPI) opened with a 3.7% surge. The core major index continued to rise and reached a historical new high of 7816 points. The KOSPI 200 futures contract rose by 5%, triggering the Korean stock market's circuit breaker mechanism, and program trading was suspended for 5 minutes.
Market funds showed a trend of concentrating towards the leading technology giants. Samsung Electronics rose by over 6.7%, SK Hynix soared by nearly 10%, and the stock prices of the two semiconductor leading enterprises both reached new historical highs. With their combined weight of nearly 45% in the KOSPI index, they became the core driving force for the market's upward movement.
This round of strong rally also further pushed up the overall scale of the Korean stock market. Its total market value has risen to 4.59 trillion US dollars, successfully surpassing Canada and ranking as the seventh-largest stock market in the world. At the same time, the KOSPI index has achieved an annual cumulative increase of 86% in major global capital markets, with particularly outstanding performance.
The strong rebound of the Korean stock market was driven by multiple favorable factors working together, especially the significant support from the fundamentals.
According to a report by Yonhap News Agency on May 11th, despite the turmoil in the Middle East, South Korea's exports continued to grow strongly. The export volume from May 1st to 10th reached 18.4 billion US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 43.7%, setting a historical record for the first five days of May. The previous highest was 16.8 billion US dollars in the same period of 2024. During the same period, with 5 working days, the daily average export was 3.69 billion US dollars, with an increase of 43.7% as well.
By category, semiconductor exports reached 8.5 billion US dollars, a 149.8% increase, accounting for 46.3% of the overall exports, an increase of 19.7 percentage points compared to the same period last year; computer peripheral equipment exports increased by 382.8%, while passenger vehicles and steel products exports decreased by 26.0% and 3.2% respectively. Oil products exports increased by 2.4%.
Exports to China, Vietnam, the United States, Taiwan of China, and the European Union all increased, with growth rates of 81.8%, 89.3%, 17.9%, 96.7%, and 11.3% respectively. The combined share of these three markets in exports was 55.3%.
Secondly, the development dividends of AI industries continue to be transmitted to the storage chip sector. Global cloud computing enterprises' 2026 AI capital expenditure is expected to reach 760 billion US dollars. The demand for HBM high-end storage chips is showing explosive growth, transforming storage chips from traditional cyclical products into strategic essential products in the AI era. Currently, major overseas manufacturers have begun to actively secure relevant production capacity, promoting continuous improvement in storage chip orders and product prices, and completely reshaping the industry's prosperity logic, directly benefiting the performance and valuation of South Korean semiconductor leading enterprises.
In addition to the support from fundamentals and industry logic, positive signals from the capital side also injected strong momentum into the market. The bullish sentiment towards South Korea's core assets from international institutions continued to rise. Headline investment banks such as Goldman Sachs have raised the 12-month target point of the KOSPI index from 8,000 points to 9,000 points and listed the Korean stock market as the preferred over-weight market in Asia. Overseas funds continued to flow in, further boosting market trading sentiment. At the same time, the overall capital market in the Asia-Pacific region showed an improvement trend, coupled with the overall loose global liquidity environment, providing strong support for the valuation repair and improvement of the technology growth sector. Multiple factors jointly drove the Korean stock market to achieve strong operation. Looking at the future market trends, the operation of the Korean stock market will continue to be influenced by multiple factors. These include the pace of capital expenditure in the global AI sector, the continuous realization of orders and prices for high-end storage chips, the continuity of monthly export data from Korea, and the linkage effect of overseas technology markets. Among them, the performance of the semiconductor sector will remain the key variable determining the future direction of the Korean stock market.
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