South Korea’s Kospi Dives 6% as Tech Jitters Make a Comeback. US Equity Futures Fall.

Rollercoaster ride Thursday sparked waves of selling and buying. South Korea couldn’t hold the line Friday.

🌏 Tech Rout Crosses the Pacific

• Friday arrived with another wave of selling as the global tech pullback refused to call it a week. S&P 500 futures fell 0.8%, Nasdaq futures dropped 1.6%, and Dow futures slipped a more modest 107 points, or about 0.2%.
• The biggest hit came in Asia, where South Korea's Kospi tumbled 5.8% and the tech-heavy Kosdaq lost 4.1%. After a rollercoaster session on Thursday, investors decided the exit door looked more appealing than the buy button.
• The selling reflects growing concerns that the AI investment boom may be getting expensive. Building the infrastructure behind artificial intelligence requires enormous spending, and traders are increasingly asking when all that investment starts paying off.

📉 Korea's Tech Giants Feel It

• South Korea's market is especially sensitive to tech sentiment because it is packed with semiconductor heavyweights like Samsung and SK Hynix.
• The sharp drop comes after an extraordinary run. The Kospi was the world's best-performing major index in 2025, and has added another 112% this year. After gains like that, even a modest shift in sentiment can produce oversized swings. It’s top heavy. And it sways.
• Volatility simply comes with the territory. Markets that climb the fastest often experience the sharpest pullbacks as traders lock in profits and reassess whether valuations have gotten a little too optimistic.

🔄 Rotation Replaces Risk

• Thursday already hinted that investors were changing lanes. The Nasdaq finished down 0.5%, extending its first four-day losing streak since February, though it recovered from an intraday drop of nearly 2%.
• The broader S&P 500 barely moved, slipping just 0.01%, while the Dow managed to gain 72 points. Money flowed into healthcare, industrial and financial stocks as investors rotated away from high-growth technology shares.
• The weekly scoreboard tells the story. The Nasdaq is on track for a 4.4% weekly loss, the S&P 500 is down 1.9%, while the Dow is actually up 0.7%. Same market, different winners.