KOSPI holds at 6,836 under a Neutral macro regime as Brent crude climbs +2.7% and the US 10-year yields 4.76%. Close briefing source unavailable today.
KOSPI holds 6,820 under a confirmed dual Neutral regime. VIX steady at 15.2, KRW firms to 1,367. Aug 31 screener candidates pending pipeline completion.
The U.S. August employment report arrives at 8:30 a.m. ET on September 4. The center of public forecasts is roughly 50,000 payroll jobs and a 4.1% unemployment rate, but the market-moving information sits in revisions, wages and hours, participation, and the breadth of hiring. This preview maps the five combinations that could change September rate-hike odds and the likely response in Treasuries, the dollar, U.S. equities, Korean assets, and private-market valuations.
A calm rundown of what happened to Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron in August. The business news was mostly good: NVIDIA's quarterly revenue doubled, and all three memory makers locked in demand through long-term supply agreements and next-generation memory shipments. SK Hynix decided to buy back 40 trillion won of its own stock and cancel all of it, and Samsung Electronics said it would return 90 to 110 trillion won to shareholders this year. Yet the three stocks moved differently: over the month of August, Samsung Electronics fell 2.1%, SK Hynix fell 3.8%, and Micron rose 13.3%. The story going around online that Micron jumped 47% is not true. This post traces where that number came from, and why the two Korean companies could not rally despite good news. Finally, it works out what cheap really means here, and whether today's prices would hold up even if earnings came down.
Which reactor type is chosen for large-scale US nuclear expansion -- AP1000 or APR1400 -- determines the scope of contracts available to Hyundai E&C, Doosan Enerbility, and KEPCO E&C. This piece separates the US government's AP1000 support for ten units, Fermi's four-unit licensing and Hyundai E&C's basic engineering, and the undecided status of the Korea-US investment discussions, then recalculates JPMorgan's 2029 order assumptions as single-reactor-type scenarios.
The U.S. Treasury doubled the minimum size of long-end buyback operations from $2 billion to $4 billion per operation. Stanley Druckenmiller called the move price management rather than liquidity management. This report tests both arguments against the mechanics of buybacks, empirical liquidity evidence, a $2.1 trillion fiscal deficit, $40 trillion of federal debt, and the latest yield response, then maps the implications for AI capex, semiconductors, and Korean equities.
NVIDIA reported fiscal Q2 2027 revenue of $96.2 billion and Data Center revenue of $89.0 billion. The more consequential disclosures were an approximately 70% fiscal 2028 growth outlook, faster ACIE growth, memory-driven margin pressure, $279 billion of supply commitments, and $108.5 billion of maximum guarantee exposure.
The Bank of Korea raised its policy rate from 2.75% to 3.00% in August 2026. A sharp growth upgrade, sticky core inflation, rising Seoul home prices, and accelerating household credit all pushed in the same direction. This report examines the decision, the historical cycle, the six-month conditional rate path, and the scenarios for Korea's economy and equity market.
This piece lines up projected 2027 return on equity and price-to-earnings multiples for fourteen Korean stocks as of the August 21, 2026 close, then compares each stock's conservative value range with its current price. The short answer: this is a list of good companies, not a list of cheap stocks. Seven of the fourteen have a value-range midpoint above the current price, and five have a current price above even the top of the range. The character of that reference date matters too. The KOSPI rose 0.88% that day, yet 683 of 876 issues fell, and the KOSDAQ dropped 4.63%, triggering a sell-side sidecar. Thirteen of the fourteen prices in the table come from a day the market fell. Earnings were mostly solid: Samsung E&A grew operating profit 51% and filled 3 trillion won in new orders, while Daeduck Electronics grew revenue 63.1% and multiplied operating profit thirty-sevenfold. Even so, the names with the most room and the names with the best earnings do not rank in the same order. This piece works through that mismatch with the numbers, and also covers the table's internal consistency check and the limits of the method.
Sorting biotech into oncology, obesity, and rare disease does not let you compare investment risk. You need to overlay four axes: disease, treatment modality, value chain, and economics, and the axis that actually divides risk is economics, meaning whether the payoff is a one-time milestone tied to a single trial or recurring revenue per patient. This piece rearranges fourteen sub-themes around where the money actually gets made, and dissects personalized oncology, where Moderna's stock jumped 177% in a single day on the August 19 Phase 3 success. In this theme, where therapeutics, diagnostics, recurrence monitoring, and data all fold into one pipeline, the economics differ at every stage. Natera's second-quarter revenue grew 37.7% and oncology testing grew 57%, while Tempus posted its first profitable quarter, which included a $98.5 million unrealized gain. But the Phase 3 trial only randomized 1,137 patients, manufacturing success rates and hazard ratios have not yet been disclosed, and the leading diagnostics names trade at 16x to 17x revenue. The conclusion is a barbell structure that separates companies that only earn if their drug works from companies that earn no matter which drug works, and all three stocks discussed here have just gone through sharp rallies, so entry-price discipline is essential.