Home > Business > Finance

Kospi gets back over 4,000 as Nvidia profits temper AI bubble concerns

Published: 20 Nov. 2025, 18:10

JIN MIN-JI
[email protected]

Electronic display boards at Hana Bank in central Seoul show the market closing price on Nov. 20. [NEWS1]

The Kospi rebounded to close higher on Thursday, reclaiming the 4,000-point mark, as Nvidia’s record revenue soothed investor jitters over an AI bubble.

The benchmark index closed up 1.92 percent to 4,004.85 points, ending a two-day losing streak, largely led by gains of tech companies. The index jumped more than 3 percent during intraday trading as Nvidia’s solid earnings raised hopes for the AI-driven market rally to regain momentum.

Institutional and foreign investors bought a net 761.95 billion won ($519 million) and 645.66 billion won worth of shares, respectively, while retail investors unloaded a net 1.39 trillion won worth of shares.

Samsung Electronics jumped 4.25 percent to 100,6000 won, while fellow chip giant SK hynix climbed 1.6 percent to 571,000 won. Major shipbuilder HD Hyundai Heavy rose 1.57 percent to 583,000 won, while Hanwha Ocean climbed 1.63 percent to 125,000 won.

Automaker Hyundai Motor shed 0.76 percent to 262,000 won, while its sister Kia fell 0.96 percent to 113,400 won.

“Nvidia’s revenue from AI data center chips continued to surge, signaling to investors that big tech companies are maintaining strong investment in data centers — and that demand for GPUs will only grow further,” said Park Ki-hoon, an analyst at Korea Investment & Securities. “Investors heard and saw what they wanted.”

Nvidia reported earnings of $31.9 billion on record revenue of $57 billion for the third quarter, beating analyst expectations. The chip maker’s revenue for the period surged 62 percent on-year, while also providing stronger-than-expected guidance for fourth quarter sales on rising demand for GPUs for data centers.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang listens as U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during the Saudi Investment Forum at the Kennedy Center, on Nov. 19 in Washington. [AP/YONHAP]

During Wednesday’s earnings call, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the company is witnessing something “very different” from the market talk of an AI bubble.

“There’s been a lot of talk about an AI bubble,” said Huang. “From our vantage point, we see something very different. As a reminder, Nvidia is unlike any other accelerator. We excel at every phase of AI from pretraining to post-training to inference.”

Park added that the government’s potential easing of regulations on the separation of banking and commerce has also boosted investor sentiment.

On Wednesday, Finance Minister Koo Yun-cheol told reporters that the government ㅡwill consult with relevant ministries on easing regulations within the spirit of the law. The regulations bar industries from owning or managing financial institutions like banks or asset managers, a rule some argue restricts investment into corporations.

“Based on what the government said, we’re seeing a growing and increasingly tangible expectation that the business and financial sectors will join forces to reinvigorate the capital market,” Park said.

The government has shown strong commitment to continue capital markets reform in a bid to boost the market, which has lagged due to the so-called Korea discount, a chronic undervaluation of Korean stocks due to geopolitical risks and other factors. The government is ironing out the details of the dividend tax reform, while the third round of commercial act revision, which requires companies to retire treasury shares within fixed deadlines, is also expected to be passed this year.

The local currency was quoted at 1,467.9 won against the greenback at 3:30 p.m., up 0.16 percent from the previous session of 1,465.6 won.

BY JIN MIN-JI [[email protected]]