NASDAQ 100 futures sank nearly 3% in Tuesday’s premarket as high-flying memory chip stocks like Micron (MU) and Sandisk (SNDK) shed part of their recent rallies.
The culprit seems to be the Korean Composite Stock Index (KOSPI), which shunted 10% lower overnight. The KOSPI is dominated by Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, two chipmakers that have both risen at an extraordinary pace over the past year due to spiking prices in the memory chip industry.
News emerged in South Korea on Tuesday that SK Hynix was switching some of its outlays from high-bandwidth memory (HBM) production toward traditional dynamic random access memory (DRAM) production.
The thought is that SK Hynix, one of three largest players in the global memory chip industry, might be seeing emerging weakness in demand for HBM chips.
S&P 500 futures are also down 1.5% as Micron, Sandisk, Applied Materials (AMAT), Western Digital (WDC), CoreWeave (CRWV) and Lam Research (LRCX) have all sold off 7% to 8% in the premarket.
The VanEck Semiconductors ETF (SMH) sold off 6% in the premarket. Alphabet (GOOGL) is down another 2% in Tuesday’s premarket after losing about 5% on Monday on news that two of its top AI researchers are leaving for competitors.
