00:02You're listening to AI Prism from Seoul Economic Daily.
00:06Three Wall Street banks went on record this week calling the Kospi bottom.
00:11Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, and UBS simultaneously.
00:16Korea's DRAM export unit prices came in at 523% above last year's level for the first 20 days of
00:24July.
00:24Korea-linked leveraged ETF liquidation stands at approximately 75% complete.
00:32The forced selling that amplified July's crash is nearly exhausted.
00:37The yen crossed 163 per dollar on July 22nd, its weakest level in 40 years.
00:44And the Bank of Japan is now internally discussing a rate hike timeline that may come earlier than December.
00:51It's Thursday, July 23rd.
00:53Here's why global investors are paying attention to Korea today.
00:58The Kospi slid into the 6,000 range in July, its sharpest monthly drop in years,
01:04driven by semiconductor peak-out fears and forced liquidations from over-leveraged Korean asset ETF positions.
01:12Those concerns are being contested by hard export data, server infrastructure earnings beats,
01:18and a new category of memory buyer, Middle Eastern sovereign AI funds.
01:24At the same time, Korea's petrochemical sector recorded five credit downgrades in the first half,
01:30a reminder that the AI-driven recovery is not uniform across the Korean market.
01:35Here's what the numbers show.
01:38Morgan Stanley maintained its 12-month Kospi target at 9,000
01:42and called the current correction a buying opportunity despite residual uncertainty.
01:48J.P. Morgan held its overweight stance on Korean equities with a 12-month Kospi target of 12,500, unchanged.
01:57Korea Customs data for July 1st to 20 show DRAM export unit prices up 523% year-on-year and
02:0721% month-on-month.
02:09Server-grade 64-gigabyte DDR5 spot prices climbed as much as 146% above the June fixed contract rate.
02:19Morgan Stanley analyst Joseph Moore projects Q3 memory prices rising more than 25%,
02:26with supply shortfalls expected to intensify through 2028.
02:32Deutsche Bank projects the memory demand-to-supply ratio rising from 110% this year to 129% by 2028,
02:41placing the cycle peak two years beyond peak-out assumptions.
02:45Supermicro disclosed an AI server order backlog exceeding $60 billion,
02:51approximately 89 trillion Korean won as of July 21st,
02:57confirming hyperscaler capital expenditure remains intact.
03:01J.P. Morgan estimates Korea-linked leveraged ETF liquidation at approximately 75% complete,
03:08while U.S.-leveraged semiconductor ETF assets under management fell 38.7% from the June peak of $163 billion to
03:19$100 billion.
03:21The Bank of Japan raised rates to 1% last month, the highest in 31 years,
03:27and is now considering an accelerated hike path after the yen crossed a 40-year low,
03:32driven by Japan's expansionary fiscal shift and Middle East-driven dollar demand.
03:38So what does this mean for global investors?
03:41Earlier, we said three Wall Street banks called the Kospi bottom simultaneously.
03:46Here's what that actually means for you.
03:49The data now supports a Korea overweight thesis on fundamentals.
03:53Memory pricing, hyperscaler CapEx confirmation,
03:57and leveraged overhang resolution are all pointing the same direction.
04:03The immediate test is this week's earnings calendar.
04:06Intel on July 24th, SK Hynix on July 29th,
04:11Samsung Electronics on July 30th, and Amazon on July 31st.
04:17Intel earnings on July 24th and SK Hynix on July 29th
04:22are the first real-time reads on whether the DRAM demand surge survives contact with quarterly management guidance.
04:31NVIDIA's Verirubin NVL72 rack is confirmed for Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Oracle, and OpenAI.
04:42And with TSMC preparing up to 10% foundry price hikes starting next year,
04:48AI infrastructure costs are rising across the full supply stack.
04:52The Bank of Japan's policy meeting at end of July is the key FX risk event.
04:58Even without a formal hike, a hawkish signal could accelerate yen appreciation
05:03and trigger correlated moves in Asian equity positioning.
05:08That's today's AI Prism Global Investors.
05:11This episode was produced with AI assistance based on Seoul Economic Daily reporting
05:17and reviewed by a human editor.
05:19AI Prism is a Juan IFRA award-winning series.
05:23We'll be back tomorrow.
05:25You've been listening to AI Prism from Seoul Economic Daily.
05:28The
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