Seoul stocks reverse earlier sharp decline as retail investors rush to buy blue chips

Seoul stocks recovered most of their earlier losses on Friday, as a wave of retail buying helped offset a sharp opening decline triggered by prolonged Middle East tensions and a slump in semiconductor shares following Google’s TurboQuant announcement. According to the Korea Exchange, the benchmark KOSPI opened at 5,300.61, down 159.85 points, or 2.93 percent from the previous session, and briefly slipped down to the 5,220 mark. It later rebounded and recouped most of its losses, closing at 5,438.87, down 21.59 points, or 0.4 percent. Shares of Samsung Electronics, which opened at 172,100 won, closed at 179,700 won, down 0.22 percent from the previous day. SK hynix followed a similar pattern, rising from an opening price of 890,000 won to finish at 922,000 won, down 1.18 percent from a day earlier. The earlier selloff followed Google’s unveiling of TurboQuant, a compression algorithm designed to reduce memory requirements in large language AI models by up to sixfold. The development raised concerns that demand for AI memory chips, a key component in training such models, could weaken

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