SK Hynix surges 25% and Samsung climbs more than 20% as Asian chip stocks rebound

Shares in South Korea's two chip heavyweights jumped in Seoul on Friday, 31 July 2026. According to CNBC, SK Hynix was trading more than 25 percent higher, putting it on course for its best day on record if the gains held, while Samsung Electronics rose more than 20 percent. LG Innotek advanced 11.2 percent and Seoul Semiconductor rose 7.8 percent.

Japanese chip stocks rallied on the same day: Advantest climbed nearly 18 percent, Disco rose more than 13 percent, Lasertec advanced more than 12 percent, Tokyo Electron gained almost 9 percent and SoftBank Group jumped more than 9 percent. The iShares Semiconductor ETF had surged more than 8 percent in the previous overnight session.

The move is a sharp reversal of this week's heavy selling, which was driven by concerns over artificial intelligence valuations and competition from Chinese memory chipmakers. The trigger was quarterly results from Microsoft and Amazon, whose cloud businesses both grew faster than expected. For the Iranian market, the significance runs mainly through global risk appetite and the prices of imported memory and electronic components.