Tightening Leverage Policy Expectations Resonate with AI Demand Reassessment, South Korea's Storage Sector Continues to Face Pressure

BlockBeats News, July 16: Recently, the South Korean semiconductor storage chip sector has been weakening, with the market's reassessment of the outlook for AI computing power demand and concerns about the industry cycle. In addition, South Korea is considering tightening its leverage trading policy, which has become a major reason for the stock price retreat. Industry insiders pointed out that the storage chip industry has always had a clear cyclical characteristic: during industry prosperity, manufacturers often expand their capacity in sync, and then a concentrated release of new capacity leads to a sharp price decline, putting the industry into overall losses; and after a contraction in capital expenditure and supply-demand rebalancing, a new cycle of prosperity emerges.

The news of Meta's plan to lease out idle computing power resources has raised concerns in the market about overspending on AI infrastructure investment, and the related sentiment quickly spread to the global storage chip sector. Industry leaders such as SanDisk, Micron Technology, Seagate Technology, and Western Digital have all seen their stock prices fall by more than 20% in recent weeks, dragging down the performance of South Korean storage chip-related stocks. Meanwhile, U.S. President Trump recently stated that Micron plans to invest $250 billion in the U.S. to expand domestic storage chip manufacturing in order to strengthen U.S. supply chain security.

Furthermore, South Korea's market risk appetite has also been affected by policy factors. The Bank of Korea announced today a 25 basis point rate hike to 2.75%, the first rate hike since January 2023, in line with market expectations. At the same time, the Korea Financial Investment Association revealed that large local asset management institutions are discussing investor protection measures for individual stock leveraged ETFs, including raising the minimum margin requirements and optimizing the rebalancing mechanism. The margin requirement for Korean leveraged chip ETFs may be raised to five times the current level, further intensifying the market's cautious sentiment towards the chip sector's funding conditions.