Tech and chip stocks are cracking globally, dragging down the averages. Gold and silver are selling off, too, while crude oil, Treasuries, and the US dollar are mostly stable.
It was a WILD day in foreign markets that have been juiced by the AI trade. South Korea’s Kospi index plunged 10% in overnight trading, with leading chip stocks like Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix cracking. Circuit breakers designed to halt trading were triggered for the fourth time in 2026, while a volatility gauge similar to the US CBOE Volatility Index (^VIX) surged to 90. That’s near the level it hit in the depths of the Great Financial Crisis in 2008.
Source: Bloomberg
Korean stocks have been surging due to the AI boom, and the US-traded iShares MSCI South Korea ETF (EWY) was up 125.3% year-to-date through Monday. But it’s slumping sharply today, and US tech stocks overall were recently down 2%. In a noteworthy development, SpaceX (SPCX) traded below the $150 opening print from its IPO day last Friday. The stock has lost more than $600 billion in market capitalization in just three sessions, pushing its valuation back below the $2 trillion level.
In more AI-related news, Oracle Corp. (ORCL) slashed 21,000 jobs over the past year to cut costs amid a massive borrow-and-spend capex binge. The cuts represented about 13% of Oracle’s workforce. The firm is in the midst of a $70 billion investment plan, one similar to those at other Big Tech names like Meta Platforms Inc. (META) and Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL).
Finally, Italian software rollup Bending Spoons is looking to tap into the red-hot IPO market. The company owns the Vimeo video platform, the Eventbrite ticketing marketplace, the file-transfer service WeTransfer, and other brands. It wants to raise as much as $1.6 billion. If everything goes according to plan, it will start trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol BSP sometime in July.
