Chey Tae-won: “The market goes haywire over just one midterm election” ... His “roller-coaster” warning resurfaces as semiconductor stocks plunge

[Financial News] As South Korea’s stock market reels in the wake of the Democratic Party’s landslide victory in the U.S. midterm elections, remarks by SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won warning of stock market volatility are drawing renewed attention.
On the 5th, Chey issued this warning to around 450 students at a special lecture hosted by the Department of Economics at Seoul National University’s College of Social Sciences in Gwanak-gu, Seoul.
The lecture was titled “The Age of Artificial Intelligence (AI): Changes in the Global Economic Paradigm and Korea’s Vision.”
In response to a student’s question about how the U.S. midterm election results might affect semiconductor affiliates such as SK hynix, Chey said, “We keep seeing situations where the market gets rocked by just one midterm election,” adding, “We need to keep in mind that this roller coaster will continue.”
In the U.S. midterm elections, the Democratic Party won gubernatorial races in areas with dense concentrations of data centers, including Texas and Georgia, fueling concerns that regulations on AI infrastructure could be tightened. As a result, on Nov. 4 (local time), Nvidia and the PHLX Semiconductor Sector Index (SOX) each fell by about 3.1%. In South Korea’s stock market, Samsung Electronics dropped 7.57% and SK hynix fell 9.46%.
Chey said the decline in share prices on the day of the lecture suggested that the market appeared to be interpreting the election results negatively for semiconductors. He said he thought many people were expressing their anxiety in this way.
He pointed to the liquidity unleashed during the 2008 Lehman Brothers crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic as the reason the stock market can swing sharply even in response to small signals.
“There’s already too much money out there,” Chey said, explaining that, with funds having poured into AI and semiconductors all at once, a correction could wipe out as much as the market had gained.
That day, he also noted that the scale of AI investment companies must shoulder has grown beyond comparison with the past. Chey admitted that when SK Group announced a 2.1 quadrillion won investment plan under its “Three Mega-Projects” last June, he wondered whether it was really appropriate to announce a plan like that.
Samsung proposed an even larger amount. “With the two companies saying they would invest nearly 5 quadrillion won, I wondered whether this was a normal plan,” Chey said.
Even so, he believed investment could not stop amid the U.S.-China struggle for AI supremacy. “I can’t be the first to die, can I?” Chey said, adding that there was no way to catch up without making bets like this.

[email protected] Seong Min-seo Reporter