Seoul Closes Down 7.5% as the Technology Sell-Off Deepens
South Korea’s Kospi finished at its weakest level since April after a session in which circuit breakers were briefly triggered and the index fell more than 9% at its worst. Tokyo’s Nikkei lost 5.08%, Samsung Electronics 9.5% and SK Hynix 11.1%. London is the exception: the FTSE 100 is up this morning, light in technology and heavy in energy, defence and banks.
The trigger was not artificial intelligence but American inflation. Consumer prices there rose 3.7% in the year to September, up from 3.4%, with petrol alone accounting for more than half of the monthly increase, and the core rate climbed to 2.6%. Markets had put the chance of a further American rate rise this month at about one in five before the figures and about one in two after them; the central bank meets on 27 and 28 October. Higher rates bite on this sector because the companies building data centres are borrowing to do it. Dan Ives of Yorkville Ives draws the distinction: “rates are a financing question, not a demand question”. On demand the numbers remain startling — Anthropic has told investors its third-quarter revenue reached $16.8bn, against $11.6bn in the second quarter and $4.7bn in the first, ahead of a listing expected next month. In London the damage fell on miners rather than technology, with Antofagasta down 6.5%, Rio Tinto 4.2% and Anglo American 4%, while Haleon and Whitbread rose. Watch whether the Bank of England now looks likelier to move too.