Foreign funds dumped ₩17.2tn of SK hynix and Samsung in a month, while both lined up new fabs

The register emptied while the index reclaimed 7,000

Foreign investors sold a net 20.305 trillion won ($15.1bn) of Kospi stock between 1 September and 2 October, and were net buyers on only seven of 22 sessions ¹. SK hynix took 12.009 trillion won of that outflow, Samsung Electronics another 5.186 trillion ¹. The two names sold hardest are the two spending hardest on new capacity.

The register shows what a month of that does. Foreign ownership of SK hynix finished at 49.76%, its lowest since May 2023↗, Samsung's at 46.41%, and the foreign share of the whole Kospi's market value at 39.66% ¹. The index still closed at 7,003.74 on Friday, its first finish above 7,000 in five sessions ¹. The two chipmakers are nearly half the index by weighting ², so the market's owners were selling the market.

The bid was the companies themselves

The complication is who bought. As of 31 August, SK hynix had been buying 700 billion to 1 trillion won of its own stock every day since 20 August, and Samsung started a buyback on 24 August, as part of an employee compensation program ³. The two have promised more than 130 trillion won ($97bn) of combined shareholder returns for 2026↗ ².

Foreign funds sold the supercycle back to the companies that are building it. An issuer can absorb a month of distribution; it cannot underwrite a repricing on its own.

₩54tn of concrete against the sellers

The companies' answer is concrete. SK hynix's board approved 54.3 trillion won ($38bn) in August↗ for two fabs: a Yongin DRAM plant with its first cleanroom due in June 2029, and a Cheongju NAND site due in December 2028 ⁴. Samsung is planning a new DRAM fabrication plant at its Giheung campus, abandoning earlier designs for research buildings there ⁵. Reuters also has SK hynix in exploratory talks↗ with Intel that could put its memory production on US soil for the first time ⁶.

Three quarters of 2027 is already booked

Contracts are the other half, the visibility trade The Inference traced on 2 October, when ten customers were locked into five-year memory contracts while the Street still priced the cycle ending in 2028. SK hynix is reported to be negotiating long-term DRAM supply↗ with Microsoft and Google worth tens of billions of dollars ⁵. Micron beat estimates on 30 September on $54.23bn of revenue, guided the current quarter to about $61.5bn, and counts more than 75% of its 2027 output already under contract ⁷⁸. None of it slowed the Korean selling ¹.

The sellers' case, and the 8 October test

The sellers have numbers too. The Kospi trades at 4.3 times expected 2027 earnings against 11 times for Asia-Pacific, after a 67% run this year ². Micron has cut SK hynix's DRAM share lead to one point, from seven points last quarter ⁵. Analysts also name profit-taking, the US-Iran conflict and rising rates ¹.

The pace is easing, from more than 3 trillion won dumped in a single session on 28 September to a 243 billion won net buy on 1 October ¹. Samsung's preliminary third-quarter results, due around 8 October, are the first test of whether visibility brings the marginal seller back ¹.