Micron Jumps 10% as 'AI Investment Anxiety' Eases

[Anchor]

Overnight on the New York stock market, Micron shares surged 10%, and the overall semiconductor index rose by about 5%. The sharp decline that began late last week has temporarily stabilized, though many analysts expect semiconductor stocks to take a breather for the time being.

Kim Beom-joo reports from New York.

[Reporter]

Semiconductor-related stocks rebounded on the New York stock market on Monday after the weekend.

Shares of Micron, one of the three major memory chipmakers which also has ties to the South Korean stock market, rose 9.9%.

Amid concerns that the outlook for artificial intelligence investment might be overheating, the stock had fallen 7% last Thursday and 13% on Friday. The market appears to have calmed down over the weekend.

Reflecting this, the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index, which tracks the performance of semiconductor companies, climbed 5.6%.

AI-related semiconductor stocks, including Intel, Nvidia, and Broadcom, also saw their share prices rise across the board.

[Justin Livengood / Analyst at Invesco: The semiconductor stocks that fell on Thursday and Friday have rebounded. Since these stocks had risen significantly, this likely helped investors regain some perspective.]

However, market experts view a short-term consolidation as more likely than a continued rally for semiconductor stocks.

In ETF trading that tracks the 25 major semiconductor companies, institutional and professional investors have placed twice as much money on the expectation that prices will fall in the short term rather than rise.

This acts as a form of short selling; notably, more than 10% of the total funds were placed on the bet that semiconductor stock prices would fall by about 7% from current levels within the next two months.

In the short term, whether the upward momentum continues or a correction occurs is expected to be determined by the U.S. consumer price index for last month, to be released on Wednesday night (KST), and the wholesale price statistics coming out on Thursday night (KST).

(Reported by Lee Hee-hoon | Video edited by Jung Sung-hoon)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.