SK Hynix Surges 11% Leading Asian Tech Rebound
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- SK Hynix shares jumped more than 11% in Seoul on Wednesday, building on the prior session's gains and rebounding from the company's biggest-ever one-day decline on Monday, which hit on investor profit-taking amid AI-spending concerns.
- Samsung Electronics rose 6.8% and Seoul Semiconductor gained 6.4% as the rally spread across Korean tech, while Japan's chip sector joined in: Advantest climbed 4.2%, Lasertec 6.4%, Disco 2.8%, Tokyo Electron 0.9%, and SoftBank Group advanced 0.8% (Renesas slipped 0.2%).
- The Asian gains followed a Wall Street semiconductor rebound: the VanEck Semiconductor ETF rose 2.5%, with Micron Technology and Lam Research each climbing about 5%, and Applied Materials and Teradyne each gaining more than 3%.
- Jordan Cvetanovski, chairman and CIO at Pella Funds, told CNBC's "Squawk Box Asia" he's seeing "really concerning behavior" in markets, calling the volatility "classic signs that we are in for a kind of rude shock coming in the AI space."
- Cvetanovski acknowledged that demand for AI infrastructure remains strong as companies race to build computing capacity, but said signs of speculative excess are beginning to emerge in AI-linked hardware stocks.
Why it matters: SK Hynix's 11% rebound came one session after its biggest-ever one-day decline, and Cvetanovski's warning of "classic signs" of a "rude shock" suggests the whipsaw isn't over. For chip-sector investors, AI-linked volatility has become the dominant near-term risk regardless of directional conviction — a Monday record loss erased by a Wednesday record gain underscores how thin the floor is.
