Stocks fall more than 11% in a week, with 844 listed companies hitting year-to-date lows

[Financial News] Last week, three out of every 10 listed companies on the stock market hit intraday year-to-date lows. On the 6th, when the KOSPI fell below the 5,000 mark intraday, shares in 720 listed companies dropped to their lowest levels of the year.
According to the Korea Exchange on the 8th, 844 (31.7%) of the 2,659 companies listed on the KOSPI and KOSDAQ set new year-to-date lows from the 2nd to the 6th. By market, 272 were KOSPI-listed companies and 572 were KOSDAQ-listed. Over the same period, the KOSPI fell 11.71% and the KOSDAQ 11.06%.
New lows were concentrated in the latter half of the week. The number of stocks hitting intraday lows, which ranged from 13 to 53 per day from the 2nd through the 5th, surged to 720 on the 6th. A circuit breaker was triggered on the KOSPI that day, and sell-sidecars were activated in both the KOSPI and KOSDAQ markets. Based on closing prices, 806 stocks hit year-to-date lows over the week, 669 of them on the 6th.
Hyundai Motor closed at ₩277,500 on the 3rd, while Hanwha Aerospace ended at ₩660,000 on the 6th, each posting its lowest closing price of the year. Doosan Enerbility (₩44,700), HD Hyundai Heavy Industries (₩262,500), POSCO Holdings (₩265,000) and Hanwha Ocean (₩47,350) hit year-to-date lows both intraday and at the close.
On the KOSDAQ, the four largest stocks by market capitalization all set new year-to-date closing lows on the 6th. Alteogen closed at ₩200,500, EcoPro at ₩66,200, EcoPro BM at ₩83,100 and Rainbow Robotics at ₩321,000. Semiconductor-related stocks such as Leeno Industrial and Wonik IPS, as well as biotech stocks including LigaChem Biosciences and ABL Bio Inc., also hit year-to-date lows.
Samsung Electronics and SK hynix fell intraday to ₩179,200 and ₩1,089,000, respectively, on the 6th, hitting seven-month lows. Although they recouped some of their intraday losses, their 20-day disparity ratios—comparing closing prices with the average over the past 20 trading days—stood at 87.59 for Samsung Electronics and 86.96 for SK hynix. Both stocks closed 12–13% below their 20-trading-day averages.
Kang Jin-hyuk, a senior researcher at Shinhan Investment & Securities, emphasized, “The recent sharp drop in stock prices reflects the possibility of a slowdown in the pace of data center investment rather than a structural crisis in the artificial intelligence (AI) industry,” adding, “The fallout from liquidation-driven panic selling may continue, so it is necessary to watch out for volatility through early in the week.”
[email protected] Choi Doo-seon Reporter