Kospi tumbles 8%: Top 3 stocks elite investors bought on the dip

The Kospi fell nearly 8 percent on Thursday as heavyweight semiconductor stocks buckled, dragging the index below the 8,000 mark for the first time in 15 trading sessions. Top-performing investors on the Mirae Asset Securities platform snapped up SK hynix, Samsung Electronics and Samsung Electro-Mechanics most aggressively during the selloff. SK hynix tumbled 14.5 percent on the day, while Samsung Electronics shed 9 percent.

According to Korea Exchange, the Kospi closed at 7,648.09, down 655.32 points, or 7.89 percent, from the previous session. The last time the benchmark finished below 8,000 was June 11, when it ended at 7,763.95 — 15 trading sessions ago.

According to Mirae Asset Securities, its top-earning investors — defined as the top 1 percent of retail stock-trading customers by return over the preceding month — were net buyers of SK hynix, Samsung Electronics and Samsung Electro-Mechanics, in that order, as of 11 a.m. Thursday.

The buying came after Micron, SanDisk and other semiconductor names closed down more than 10 percent overnight. The scale of the decline in large-cap chip stocks was severe enough to trigger a sell-side sidecar circuit breaker early in Thursday's session.

Yet elite investors treated the rout as a buying opportunity, actively accumulating the leading chip names and semiconductor-related shares — SK hynix, Samsung Electronics and Samsung Electro-Mechanics.

SK hynix was trading at 2.41 million won ($1,550), down 5.74 percent from the previous close, as of 11 a.m. Thursday, before finishing the session down 14.57 percent at 2.19 million won.

Analysts at brokerages remained upbeat on SK hynix even as the stock fell sharply.

Kim Un-ho, an analyst at IBK Investment & Securities, raised his target price for SK hynix on Thursday from 1.8 million won to 4 million won while maintaining a buy recommendation, saying "the market is still, and continues to be, severely underestimating memory chip demand."

Samsung Electronics ranked second among the day's top net purchases.

Samsung Electronics closed at 286,000 won, down 9.06 percent from the previous session.

Choi Bo-young, an analyst at Kyobo Securities, said Samsung Electronics "is recovering its overall semiconductor competitiveness by maintaining its No. 1 market share in DRAM and NAND while making its first delivery of HBM4 to Nvidia." Choi raised the target price for Samsung Electronics to 500,000 won on Wednesday.

Samsung Electro-Mechanics took the third spot for net purchases. The company has been classified as a semiconductor-related stock — and its share price has surged accordingly — on the strength of its semiconductor substrate business.

Samsung Electro-Mechanics closed at 1.93 million won on Thursday, down 12.65 percent from the previous session.

Brokerages have also offered a positive outlook on Samsung Electro-Mechanics.

NH Investment raised its target price for Samsung Electro-Mechanics from 1.7 million won to 3 million won on Wednesday, saying "the industry upcycle driven by expanding demand for multilayer ceramic capacitors for AI servers is now fully under way."

Meanwhile, Hanmi Semiconductor, DB HiTek and HD Hyundai Electric were the top three stocks by net selling on Thursday.