Kospi could hit 10,000 this summer; semiconductor dominance 'won't fade easily,' Kiwoom Securities says

Kiwoom Securities said Tuesday the Kospi could reach the 10,000-point mark sometime this summer.

Analysts Han Ji-young and Choi Jae-won said the Kospi is expected to "return to an upward trajectory, breaking through its previous all-time high," and projected the index would trade in a range of 7,800 to 9,800 points this month.

The analysts said a second-quarter earnings season for key industries, including semiconductors, could push the market's consensus estimate for Kospi operating profit higher, which in turn would drive share prices to a new level.

They added that market expectations for Kospi's 2026 operating profit could reach the 1,000 trillion won ($646 billion) range during the second-quarter earnings season. "We expect the earnings upgrade to translate directly into a share price upgrade," they said.

The analysts said the concentration of gains in semiconductor stocks "will not fade easily." Samsung Electronics and SK hynix are currently leading what they described as a semiconductor supercycle. "It is semiconductors that drive the Kospi's share price and earnings cycles," they said, adding that whether the semiconductor cycle proves cyclical or evolves into structural growth will be a key theme to watch in the second half. However, they cautioned that high volatility could still emerge even as the Kospi sets new highs in July.

They also said investors should raise their expectations for sector rotation compared with June, as the external environment — including macroeconomic conditions and geopolitical factors — has improved and expectations for government policy support remain in place.

Looking further ahead, the analysts set a year-end upper target range for the Kospi at 11,000 to 12,000 points. They warned that the market could see heightened volatility within a trading range in mid-August and late September as earnings growth momentum slows and investors weigh the US Federal Reserve's policy path.

On Middle East risks, including US-Iran cease-fire negotiations, the analysts said markets have "built up immunity over the past three-plus months" despite frequent flare-ups. "This is now a period when investors need to pay more attention to interest rate changes than to the war itself," they said.

Meanwhile, JPMorgan earlier raised its Kospi target from 10,000 to 15,000 in a bull-case scenario.

In a report circulated June 25, JPMorgan set its base-case Kospi target at 12,500, with bull- and bear-case scenarios of 15,000 and 8,000, respectively — up from its previous projections of 9,000 (base case), 10,000 (bull case) and 6,000 (bear case).

"We maintain a bullish outlook on the Korean stock market despite persistent foreign selling and high volatility," the report said.

The bank cited a positive view on AI and the resulting earnings growth among hardware companies as key drivers. More specifically, it pointed to "a combination of additional earnings improvement factors from growth across various industrial sectors — including AI-related fields — financial stocks' asset effects, potential net interest margin improvement, and continued valuation upside from corporate governance reform." The report also noted that profits generated by technology companies involved in building AI data centers "have reached a level that is meaningful even at the macroeconomic scale," adding that this creates a wealth effect not only for businesses and households but also for governments, enabling longer-term policy planning.