It was another dizzying day for Asia’s tech stocks.
A day after falling 10 percent, South Korea’s benchmark KOSPI rose in a volatile trading session on Wednesday. The index rose as much as 4 percent in morning trade before a sharp selloff briefly drove it down 2 percent. By late afternoon, it had clawed its way back to a gain of nearly 3 percent.
South Korea’s stock market, the world’s best performer since the start of last year, sparked a global sell-off in tech stocks as the KOSPI plunged on Tuesday. The rout reflected growing investor unease over whether the rally fueled by enthusiasm for artificial intelligence had gone too far, too fast.
S&P 500 futures rose 0.2 percent, pointing to a modest gain when stocks resume trading in the U.S. on Wednesday.
In Asia, no market is more exposed to the AI boom than South Korea and Taiwan, where a trio of semiconductor companies exerts an outsized influence on broader stock indexes.
In South Korea, the rebound was led by Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, the country’s two chip giants. Samsung rose 8 percent, while SK Hynix rose 1 percent.
Taiwan moved in the opposite direction. The benchmark index fell more than 2 percent as shares in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company — the world’s largest contract chip maker — fell 4 percent.
