WhyItDropped

KOSPI · February 28, 2025

Doubt that AI spending had run too far

-3.39%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

Nine months of giving it back

near the end of it · 2024-07-11 → 2025-04-09, -20.67% over the whole period

What happened that day?

  • The KOSPI fell 3.39% on the day
  • The US had signalled tariffs starting the following month, and doubts about whether AI spending would continue arrived on top
  • Earlier that year a Chinese company said it had built a model of comparable ability at far lower cost, read as meaning fewer expensive chips would be needed
  • Two chipmakers carry enough weight in the KOSPI to expose it directly to that story
  • Tariffs and chip doubts pushed the same way, and the decline ran to 9 April
  • It bottomed just before the US announced its tariff pause

Sources

Every figure on this page is recomputed from the original daily closing prices and checked against them at build time. The account of what happened is written from the sources listed above.