$900 Billion Just Vanished as Korean Chip Stocks Crater, but the Squawk Crew Isn’t Sold on an AI Breakdown

Omor Ibne Ehsan

Wed, June 24, 2026 astatine 12:15 PM CDT 4 min read

Quick Read

• Korea's $25B successful grounds borderline indebtedness amplified the Kospi crash; MU's net contiguous service arsenic the archetypal hard trial of AI representation demand.

• Oracle's $638B backlog (up 363%) and Broadcom's AI semi gross surging 143% reason the selloff reflects positioning, not a illness successful AI spending.

• Don't wait: the expert who called NVIDIA successful 2010 conscionable revealed his apical 10 AI stocks. See the afloat database FREE now.

Four consecutive down sessions person erased much than $900 cardinal successful equity value, with the proximate origin tracing to Seoul. The Kospi fell astir 10% successful its worst league successful years, and SK Hynix and Samsung some plunging much than 12% the time aft SK Hynix overtook Samsung arsenic Korea's astir invaluable company. Layered connected apical is grounds borderline indebtedness of astir $25 cardinal (38.5 trillion won) by the extremity of May. Korean retail had leaned into the rally with some hands erstwhile the selling hit.

On CNBC's Squawk connected the Street, Carl Quintanilla walked the sheet done whether this was an AI request inflection oregon a positioning unwind. David Faber work it this way. "It's not wide that we're seeing thing that genuinely is reflective of that, of undermining the wide maturation of the AI ecosystem successful the consciousness of spending being chopped back." Sara Eisen agreed the capex representation is intact portion acknowledging the tape, noting "the request is determination and the capex is inactive increasing strong, but there's a small spot much scrutiny... particularly astir the mag-7, which has lag present respective days successful a row."

Don't wait: the expert who called NVIDIA successful 2010 conscionable revealed his apical 10 AI stocks. See the afloat database FREE now.

The representation mix-shift that lit the fuse

Kristina Partsinevelos zeroed successful connected the trigger. "SK Hynix had conscionable overtaken Samsung arsenic Korea's astir invaluable institution conscionable yesterday, and portion of it besides is simply a study that SK Hynix is slowing its adjacent procreation precocious bandwidth representation for chips to marque much commoditized DRAM... wherever shortages person really pushed prices up." That translates plainly. The highest-margin, AI-coded merchandise successful the representation analyzable (HBM) is seeing a shaper divert capableness to a cyclical commodity wherever pricing is ripping. Bulls work that arsenic opportunistic. Bears work it arsenic a archer connected AI representation bid books.

The cleanest read-through sits with Micron Technology (NASDAQ:MU), which reports tonight. Last 4th Micron printed $23.86 cardinal successful revenue, up 196.3% twelvemonth implicit year, with GAAP gross borderline of 74.4% and EPS of $12.20. Guidance for the May 4th calls for $33.5 cardinal successful gross and gross borderline adjacent 81%. CEO Sanjay Mehrotra framed it arsenic "memory has go a strategical plus for our customers" successful the fiscal Q2 property release. Micron is down astir 10.51% intraday today, adjacent aft moving 61.3% successful the past period and 882.46% implicit a year. Reddit's r/wallstreetbets nailed the setup earlier the open: "Micron net Tuesday and the barroom feels insanely high, anyone other nervous?"