US Tech Stocks Drag Asian Shares Lower
Affected by US tech giants increasing AI infrastructure capital expenditure and short-term cash flow pressure, Wall Street has raised doubts about the pace of AI monetization. Asia-Pacific tech stocks collectively faced selling pressure on the 30th, with South Korea's KOSPI opening lower and moving lower, plunging over 4.6% intraday and triggering the 5-minute program trading halt mechanism Sidecar at 10:04 a.m., while heavyweights Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix corrected in tandem.
Alphabet Earnings Spark Concerns
Yu-Ting Lai, manager of Dahua Korea KOSPI 50, said the market attributed the decline to the overnight plunge in US tech stocks and concerns over AI investment returns following Alphabet's earnings. Alphabet's third-quarter revenue was slightly below market expectations, and with continued expansion of AI data centers and computing infrastructure, quarterly free cash flow turned to negative US$910 million or more, with the share price plunging over 12% in a single day, prompting investors to reprice the profit timeline for the overall AI supply chain.
Arms Race Demand Has Not Disappeared
Lai pointed out that large technology companies including Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta remain in the AI arms race phase, with capital expenditure continuing to expand. According to Reuters, Alphabet even plans to further increase AI infrastructure investment next year, showing that demand for cloud computing and generative AI remains far above supply. For South Korea's semiconductor industry, the long-term demand logic for HBM, high-bandwidth memory, advanced packaging and AI server DRAM has not changed. The correction reflects concerns about an extended payback period, not disappearing demand.
Valuation Digestion, Not a Cyclical Reversal
From a fund-flow perspective, Korean stocks have not shown signs of systematic withdrawal, with domestic South Korean funds and long-term institutional funds continuing to flow into equity funds and large-cap heavyweights, and some funds buying tech heavyweights on dips. Recent volatility is also related to uncertainty ahead of the US presidential election, with funds entering an event-risk management phase and AI and semiconductor groups with larger gains becoming priority targets for trimming. Overall, the plunge looks more like valuation digestion in the AI investment cycle, with leading companies mastering HBM and advanced memory technologies such as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix seeing medium- to long-term positioning value emerge.