SK Hynix Surges 30%, Samsung 27% as AI Stocks Rebound
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- SK Hynix closed nearly 30% higher in Seoul on Friday, marking its best day on record
- Samsung Electronics closed nearly 27% higher, also clocking its highest single-day gains; LG Innotek advanced 21.23% and Seoul Semiconductor rose 15%
- Asian chip stocks rallied broadly: TSMC surged almost 10%, Advantest climbed more than 16%, Tokyo Electron gained 6.24%, Disco and Lasertec each rose 12.74%, Renesas added 7.7%, and SoftBank Group jumped 13.8%
- Microsoft had rallied 16% during Thursday's regular session after faster-than-expected Azure cloud growth, reinforcing confidence that AI infrastructure spending remains robust
- Amazon jumped more than 9% in extended trading after second-quarter revenue beat analyst expectations, driven by continued cloud-computing strength
- iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX) surged more than 8% overnight as investors piled back into AI-linked chipmakers
- Andrew Jackson, head of equity strategy at Ortus Advisors, said Microsoft's results 'sparked a huge rebound for risk-on and AI,' noting that a 'spend at all costs' mentality 'has been punished by the market'
Why it matters: This one-day rebound erased a week's chip-stock losses, but the article's own framing reveals the rally's fragility: the sell-off it reversed was driven by concerns over lofty AI valuations and intensifying Chinese memory-chip competition, both of which remain unresolved. Jackson's explicit warning that the 'spend at all costs' mentality has been punished frames the rebound as conditional on Microsoft and peers keeping capex disciplined, not as validation of unlimited AI infrastructure spending.
