ETFs Drive Stock Moves: Samsung Electro-Mechanics Up, Hanmi Semiconductor Down

*Editor's Note: 'AI PRISM' (Personalized Report & Insight Summarizing Media) is an "artificial intelligence (AI)-based customized news recommendation and summarization service" developed with support from the Korea Press Foundation. It selects and provides six customized news items by reader type.

1. "World's Largest Oil Money Knocks on K-Stocks' Door"…Abu Dhabi Investment Authority to Visit Korea Next Week

- Key Summary: The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), a UAE sovereign wealth fund with 1,700 trillion won in AUM, will visit Korea on the 18th and 19th to hold investment discussions with domestic asset management firms. ADIA is seeking managers who can invest at the benchmark (BM) level rather than through active management, and is reported to prefer asset managers under financial holding companies over independent firms. The industry expects the first investment to reach several hundred billion won, while another UAE sovereign wealth fund, the Abu Dhabi Investment Council (ADIC), made a first investment of around 300 billion won. Despite 24 consecutive trading sessions of net selling by foreigners, visits by overseas long-term investment capital such as Yale University's endowment with AUM of more than 65 trillion won and MIT's endowment continue.

2. Exchange Rate in 1,500 Range for 18th Straight Session on Middle East Risk Aversion

- Key Summary: As the United States raised the level of its military response to Iran and concerns over a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz overlapped, demand for the dollar, a safe-haven asset, surged, pushing the won-dollar exchange rate up to 1,530.2 won intraday. Foreigners net sold more than 1.4 trillion won in the stock market on the day alone, accelerating the rise in the exchange rate, but strengthened monitoring by foreign exchange authorities and inspections of illegal foreign exchange transactions partly limited the increase. The Bank of Korea and the Financial Supervisory Service launched a joint inspection of major foreign exchange banks, and the government also took measures to expand foreign currency supply by requesting major exporters to convert overseas export proceeds early. In the bond market, the three-year government bond yield recorded 3.904% annually and the 10-year bond 4.300% annually, with long-term bonds overall showing weakness.

3. Samsung Electro-Mechanics and Hanmi Semiconductor Seesaw…ETFs Shake Semiconductor Equipment Stocks

- Key Summary: When Samsung Asset Management's 'KODEX AI Semiconductor TOP2 Plus' raised its Samsung Electro-Mechanics weighting from 0% to 27.36% through rebalancing, Samsung Electro-Mechanics shares surged more than 14% in two days, while Hanmi Semiconductor, whose weighting was reduced, fell 5.63%, showing that ETF supply and demand directly move stock prices. By inclusion amount, ETFs hold 3.6044 trillion won of Samsung Electro-Mechanics, 2.1140 trillion won of Hanmi Semiconductor, and 797.6 billion won of LG Innotek, making it already difficult to ignore ETF capital flows. Because ETFs mechanically buy a stock in proportion to its weighting when capital flows in and sell when it flows out, the phenomenon of stock prices moving sharply regardless of individual company performance is intensifying. Meanwhile, the KOSPI closed at 7,763.95 on the day, up 33.13 points (0.43%) from the previous trading session, while the KOSDAQ surged 45.30 points (4.76%) to 996.93, approaching the 1,000 mark ("Cheonsdaq").

4. "Catch the Last Train on SpaceX"…50 Billion Won Pours into Space ETFs in a Single Day

- Key Summary: Ahead of the largest SpaceX IPO in history, domestic individual investors net bought 25.2 billion won of 'TIGER US Space Tech' and 24.5 billion won of 'ACE US Space Tech Active' on the day, pouring about 50 billion won into the two products alone. Over the most recent week (June 4-11), 153.1 billion won flowed into 'TIGER US Space Tech' and 78.1 billion won into 'ACE US Space Tech Active,' with expectations for SpaceX's listing driving capital flows. SpaceX's corporate value based on its offering price is 1.76 trillion dollars (about 2,700 trillion won), ranking around seventh in market capitalization on the US stock market, and passive buying demand from sequential inclusion in the Nasdaq 100, FTSE Russell, and MSCI after listing is estimated at 6.2 billion to 10.1 billion dollars. However, a high valuation with a price-to-sales ratio (PSR) of 93.6 times and the burden of selling volume from the release of existing shareholders' lockup over 180 days are being cited as factors that could expand volatility after listing.

5. E-Mart (139480) and Shinsegae (004170) to Acquire All FI-Held Stakes in SSG.com

- Key Summary: E-Mart and Shinsegae resolved at their board meetings to acquire the entire 30% stake in SSG.com held by Olympus Je-il Cha, a financial investor (FI), for about 1.2710 trillion won. Upon completion of the transaction, E-Mart's stake in SSG.com will rise from the previous 45.58% to 65.11%, and Shinsegae's from 24.42% to 34.89%, making it a 100% wholly-owned subsidiary of both companies. SSG.com has recorded net losses for three consecutive years since 2023, posting revenue of 1.3470 trillion won and a net loss of 99.6 billion won last year. However, with Shinsegae Group's declaration of affiliate separation, the task of one side having to lower its stake below 10% in the future remains, drawing attention to the possibility of further stake readjustment.

6. Bank of Korea Extends Foreign Currency Reserve Interest Payments Through Year-End…Strengthening Market Stabilization Card

- Key Summary: The Bank of Korea's Monetary Policy Committee decided to extend through the end of this year, by six months, the interest payment system on excess reserves of financial institutions' foreign currency deposits (foreign currency reserves), with the interest rate linked to the US Federal Reserve's policy rate target range. The measure aims to increase incentives for domestic deposits of foreign currency by allowing banks to deposit dollars with the BOK and earn risk-free interest income in a high exchange rate environment, thereby expanding foreign exchange reserves and strengthening authorities' market response capacity. This decision is linked to a series of recent market stabilization measures, including a director-level verbal intervention by foreign exchange authorities (June 8), forward currency selling by the National Pension Service, and requests to exporters to convert export proceeds early. A foreign exchange market expert said, "There is a psychological stabilizing effect in that increased foreign exchange reserves expand authorities' capacity to respond to the market."