Asian Chip Stocks Slide on 30 October: Korea's KOSPI Drops Over 5% Intraday as Samsung and SK Hynix Fall

Asian chip stocks slid intraday on 30 October. Korea's KOSPI index fell 5.13% to 5,633.34 by 10:25 a.m. in Seoul; the Korea Exchange briefly restricted programme sell orders for five minutes at 10:04 a.m. after KOSPI 200 futures fell 5.12%. Foreign investors had sold a net 553.7 billion won by 10:25 a.m., with institutions selling a further 240.9 billion won.

Korea's two memory giants lead the fall

Korea Exchange data cited by Aju Press put Samsung Electronics at 222,500 won at 9:38 a.m., down 9,500 won (4.09%), and SK Hynix at 1,414,000 won, down 11,200 won (7.34%). Later intraday snapshots showed the falls widening to roughly 5% to 5.8% for Samsung and about 8% for SK Hynix; snapshots differ by timing, and the figures cited here are intraday snapshots, not closing prices.

The sell-off spreads across Asia

In Japan, the tech-heavy Nikkei 225 fell 2.5% and SoftBank lost 6%; Taiwan's TSMC fell 2.1% and Japan's Kioxia dropped 8.3%. In the United States, Alphabet fell 12.6% on Thursday, the Nasdaq Composite dropped 1.38%, and Intel and Amazon weakened further after hours, setting a soft tone for Asia's open.

The trigger: AI spending versus returns

The focus is whether AI infrastructure spending will earn an adequate return. Amazon's cloud unit AWS grew 39% to $46 billion in the third quarter, but trailing-12-month free cash flow turned to a $42.4 billion outflow, while 2026 capital expenditure held at about $220 billion; Intel forecast fourth-quarter revenue of $15 billion to $16 billion, below consensus, with its PC slowdown expected to persist through the first half of 2027, even as Data Center and AI revenue rose 78%. Pepperstone analyst Chris Weston told Reuters that markets were questioning whether shareholders would earn an adequate return on the enormous capital being deployed. The sell-off reflects financing and return worries rather than evidence of an AI demand collapse — AWS and Intel's data-center business are still growing.