Korean Retail Investors Shift to Japanese Semiconductor Supply Chain Buying Spree, Murata, Tokyo Electron Among Top Net Buyers, Kakao Corp Sees Substantial Rebound Before Profit-Taking

BlockBeats News, August 17th. According to data from the Korea Securities Depository, from August 3rd to 14th, the top net buyer of Japanese stocks by Korean investors was Murata Manufacturing, with approximately $5.319 million. Tokyo Electron ranked second with around $2.262 million, while semiconductor material manufacturer Arisawa Manufacturing and inspection equipment manufacturer Micronics held the third and fourth positions. Among the top ten net buyers, 6 were related to semiconductors and electronic components, totaling approximately $14.367 million, accounting for 73% of the total net buying in the top ten. If we expand the scope to the top twenty, companies in the supply chain such as Fujikura and Renesas Electronics also saw significant buying.

A notable difference from previous trends is that in July, Korean retail investors' buying focus had diversified to financial stocks, with Mitsubishi UFJ briefly taking the top spot in net purchases. However, this month, Mitsubishi UFJ has dropped out of the top fifty, and funds have shifted back towards the Japanese semiconductor supply chain. Kioxia, after a sharp drop of about 48% in July, quickly rebounded this month, with the stock price rising from 46,500 yen at the end of July to 53,740 yen on August 14th, an increase of around 16%. Korean retail investors have been seen to take profit from their positions in Kioxia—up to August 13th, Kioxia had a net purchase of approximately $0.97 million, rising to sixth place, but from August 3rd to 14th, there was a cumulative net selling of about $3.745 million, ranking second in net selling.

Market sentiment is supported by expectations of AI investment expanding to the full storage chain: Kioxia and SanDisk jointly released the 9th generation 2Tb QLC Flash, targeting AI and data-intensive applications. SanDisk presented at an investor event a high single-digit to around 15% annual sales growth target for the fiscal years 2028 to 2030 and identified high-bandwidth flash for AI inference as a growth engine. Recently, Asian markets have shown strength simultaneously. Korean retail investors are selectively increasing their exposure to the Japanese semiconductor supply chain while realizing profits from positions that have rebounded significantly.