South Korea's stock market just delivered one of the wildest weeks in its history — and ended it with a violent rally.
Shares of SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics each surged more than 20% in Seoul on Friday, according to CNBC's Lee Ying Shan, a sharp reversal from the sell-off that had gripped the market earlier in the week. CNBC reports the broader move amounted to the sharpest reversal on record for South Korea's market, capping what it described as a month of wild swings in a "bipolar" market.
The rebound wasn't confined to Seoul. CNBC-TV18 reports Asian stocks rose sharply on Friday, led by a record intraday jump in South Korean shares, as investors piled back into artificial intelligence stocks following the week's losses. Crude oil edged higher at the same time. The Associated Press likewise reports the Kospi index jumped more than 15%, tracking Wall Street gains as AI-related stocks bounced back.
The common thread across every account is artificial intelligence. SK Hynix and Samsung are the world's dominant suppliers of the memory chips that AI data centers consume in enormous quantities, which makes the Kospi unusually sensitive to sentiment about the AI trade. When U.S. technology stocks rallied, Seoul's chipmakers rallied harder.
That leverage cuts both ways, and this week showed both edges within days of each other: a meltdown, then a record rebound. CNBC's coverage frames the open question as what comes next, rather than treating the bounce as a resolution.
It matters because South Korea's chipmakers are a real-time barometer for how much the world believes in the AI boom — and right now that belief is swinging by 20% in a single session.