Did the bubble just burst?

Just two weeks after clearing 9,000 in a move that saw local shares more than double in 2026, the Kospi fell into a bear market.

The benchmark, which is dominated by South Korea’s national chip champions, is the poster child for the global semi mania. From the “Liberation Day” lows to the late-June peak, the Kospi rose more than 300%.

The abrupt bear market plunge came as Samsung and SK Hynix logged steep losses for a second day. Between them, the HBM heavyweights account for more than half of index market cap.

Samsung’s decline on Wednesday, more than 6%, came atop a 7% slide the previous session, when investors took profits following an earnings report that showed a 19-fold increase in operating profit.

Suffice to say some believe the top’s in for semis, at least in the near-term. Indeed, “semi selloff” is the new zeitgeist. (How quickly the narrative shifts. From boom to bust in just two months.)

SK Hynix, which rose nearly 1,700% from last year’s lows to this year’s nosebleed highs, is now ~30% off the June peak. Just in time for this week’s US listing. (The ADRs will start trading on Friday.)

As a quick reminder, the company’s US debut was set to rank among history’s largest, as shown above.

Each ADR represents a tenth of a share of common. And every weak session for the local shares reduces the value of the US offering.

Through Wednesday, SK Hynix was on track for its worst week in South Korea since 2020.

It’d be inauspicious, and fitting in some ways, if the US listing were to coincide with the bursting of the bubble.

“The big question is whether this listing has come a little too late,” one investor told Bloomberg on Monday, as the company began the marketing process. “Memory chip stocks have lost momentum.”

On June 24, when SK Hynix first tipped plans for a US listing, I asked a simple question: “More bells at the top?”