#KOSPI fell 28%. Why does JP Morgan’s latest research still dare to look at 12,500 points?
KOSPI is down about 28% from its June high, yet JP Morgan continues to give a target of 12,500 points.
Based on the July 21 closing price, there is still about 85% upside potential.
What lets it take such a view is that this sell-off has been driven by heavy leverage deleveraging:
The size of Korea-related leveraged ETFs has dropped from about $50 billion to $26 billion, with roughly 75% of deleveraging already completed. Hedge funds have also cut positions by more than half, and the long/short ratio has fallen from above 5.5x to below 4x.
Foreign investors have sold more than $110 billion worth of South Korean stocks this year, with about 90% concentrated in Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix. The outflow is highly concentrated and has not yet spread into a fundamental crisis across the entire Korean market.
So JP Morgan is betting that: once leveraged selling pressure gradually exhausts, the stock price will return to profitability.
But it’s still too early to directly confirm the bottom. Volatility in the Korean market remains close to 5 times that of the U.S. stocks, and leveraged ETFs are still some distance away from the roughly $18 billion “reasonable” size.
Whether 12,500 points can be reached ultimately depends on whether AI capital expenditure and storage earnings can continue to grow. Deleveraging can only address selling pressure—the earnings are what determine how high things can go next.