EWY

The Week

EWY.US fell 10.39% this week to close at $137.01, underperforming the S&P 500 by roughly 7.71 percentage points. The week opened higher at $158.37 on Monday, touched an intraday high of $158.91, then reversed sharply lower. Wednesday brought wide intraday swings, and Thursday was the heaviest session—down 13.00% on more than 44 million shares traded, marking a fresh 60-day low of $131.65. Friday staged a mild rebound to $137.01 on above-average volume. The full-week amplitude came in at 17.21%, and average daily volume ran about 62.75% above its recent median, pointing to a high-volume sell-off rather than an orderly pullback.

Sector News

South Korean equities saw extreme stress this week. The KOSPI briefly dropped 8.8% on Thursday, falling below the 5,000-point mark and tripping the exchange’s SIDECAR mechanism to pause programme selling. Chipmakers led the selling pressure, at one point triggering a trading halt on the main bourse. On the macro side, the US midterm result and its impact on AI investment sentiment dominated the conversation, with Morgan Stanley flagging November as a possible turning point for KOSPI depending on how AI sentiment evolves. IIF data showed $14.6bn of foreign outflows from Korean equities in October. Policy responses came quickly: Seoul announced a three-month easing of margin trading rules and a lock-up period for cornerstone investors to curb post-IPO sell-offs. In the options market tied to EWY, some put contracts surged nearly 49x from the start of the week.

The Week Ahead

Tuesday’s US CPI and core CPI prints for October are the key macro event: consensus expects core CPI to rise to 2.8% from 2.6%, and headline CPI to tick up to 3.9% from 3.7%. A hotter reading could keep pressure on risk assets across Asia. Monday brings wholesale sales data, and Tuesday also includes the NFIB small-business optimism index. In Korea, the three-month margin-trading easing announced last week will begin to take effect, and its impact on liquidity conditions is worth tracking. Beyond scheduled data, the pace at which AI-related sentiment stabilises after this week’s sharp drawdown will shape the near-term direction for Korean assets.

In Short

This week’s decline in EWY.US reflected a combination of broad outflows, policy easing measures, and a rapid cooling of AI sentiment rather than a single catalyst. On valuation, the fund trades at about 38.2x P/E and 2.2x P/B, well below its 60-day average price level of $173.05. Capital flows were mixed on the latest session: large and medium orders were net buyers, while small-lot flows stayed net sellers. The tension to watch is whether Tuesday’s US CPI pushes yields and dollar strength further, testing the Korean authorities’ ability to stabilise the margin-driven selling. With volatility elevated, price is likely to keep chopping between $131.65 and $154.46 in the near term.

This article is generated by LongbridgeAI from market data, for information only and not investment advice.