Technology is racing in the United States. He races in Europe. But above all it runs in Asia, where South Korea not only toasts, but collects. This was underlined by Gabriel Debach, market analyst at eToro, who, starting from the latest developments in terms of AI, focuses on the performance of Korean companies and indices. In the United States the signal was clear: yesterday the highs for the S&P 500 (13th since the beginning of the year), Nasdaq 100 (9th) and Russell 2000 (14th) were updated again, with capital stopping dispersing and starting to choose. And he chose only one thing: the artificial intelligence supply chain. Not the software, not the narrative, but the infrastructure. Semiconductors. Memory. Computing power.
AI: Markets choose Korea
Intel, Sandisk and Seagate have led the increases since the beginning of the conflict and since the beginning of the year, yesterday Qualcomm and Micron closed in double digits in a single session. And today the market is ready to toast AMD’s numbers (up 16% in the after market). Europe follows, with less attention (also due to the lower impact of the sector on European price lists) but without deviations. +13.65% for technology in April. STMicroelectronics (+118% since the beginning of the year, second in performance in the Stoxx 600 behind only the German Aixtron and first on the FTSE MIB), Infineon (+60%), ASM (+62%). It’s the acknowledgment that that is the direction.
AMD
The company posted solid quarterly results, beating expectations across all major indicators and indicating a second-quarter outlook well above estimates. Revenues stood at 10.2 billion dollars, against expectations of 9.9 billion. Adjusted earnings per share were $1.37, above the $1.28 forecast. For the second quarter, the company expects revenue of 10.9 billion to 11.5 billion, compared to a consensus of 10.5 billion. Adjusted gross margin is expected to be around 56%. Lisa Su highlighted strengthening customer demand for AI chips and systems, with forecasts exceeding initial expectations and a growing number of large-scale projects. It’s not just about graphics cards (GPUs). Even on the processors (CPU) front, demand is in tension, driven by the expansion of artificial intelligence agents, with increasingly clear signs of a lack of supply.
It’s not just rotation, it’s depth. The market is moving further and further downstream, where supply shortages are becoming the real driver of pricing power and margins.
South Korea
And then there’s Korea. Because while Western indices mainly reflect demand, Korea measures supply. And the offer today is not enough. South Korean exports exploded 48% year-on-year in April, well above expectations. Semiconductors +173%, computer-related products +516%. Numbers that are no longer just growth: they are bottlenecks that become prices. Memory chips see sharply rising contracts, export prices of Korean electronic components soar almost 60% year over year. It is the physical confirmation of what the market has been discounting for weeks: demand is exceeding supply, and those who produce the building blocks of AI are cashing in on the mismatch.
It’s tension, and when tension enters prices the message changes. Margins, cash flows and the value chain change. Companies are starting to order earlier, to accumulate, to guarantee production capacity. Order books swell. The factories chase. And here – explains the expert – the picture is reversed. Because it is normal to think that demand drives the cycle. But perhaps it could also be the opposite. That is, supply sets the pace, determining the price of the technology. And that’s exactly why the narrative is shifting from who will use AI to who will make it possible. Hyperscalers can announce mind-boggling capex, but without wafers, without advanced packaging, without high-density SSDs, those dollars remain on paper. Korea, at this moment, becomes the most profitable bottleneck on the planet.
Just think of how Samsung Electronics saw its capitalization exceed one trillion dollars, becoming the first South Korean and second Asian company (behind TSM) to toast this milestone. The stock outperformed the likes of Berkshire, Eli Lilly and JPMorgan. Today marks the greatest daily increase since 5 December 2020, with a progress of 14%. Over 1,200 sessions without new highs seem far away (from 11 January 2021 to 2 January 2026).
SK Hynix makes record profits, and the Korean stock index is at +75% since the beginning of the year, +186% over twelve months.
Those of the military coup seem like distant times (it was December 2024 and the Kospi was trading at around 2,500 points) and above all the promise of President Lee Jae-myung on 21 April 2025: the era of the KOSPI at 5,000 points. Today we are at almost 7,384. While Wall Street celebrates gains, Seoul produces them. And it produces them at increasing margins, because when everything is missing, even the most scalable supplier gains pricing power. The rest of the world can discuss sector rotations, small caps trying to recover, cyclicals trying to rebound. The artificial intelligence supply chain, however, is already choosing.
