KOSPI and KOSDAQ Both Hit Record Highs as Power Equipment, Shipbuilding, and Consumer Stocks Rally

KOSPI and KOSDAQ Both Set New Records

The KOSPI rallied more than 2% intraday to 6,622 points, marking a fresh all-time high, while Korea's total market capitalization crossed 6,000 trillion won for the first time. The KOSDAQ also broke through 1,124 points to reach its own record. Foreign investors bought a net roughly 460 billion won and institutions bought over 1 trillion won, with pension funds among the buyers, while the won traded around 1,470 per dollar.

Beneath the index-level cheer, roughly 500 KOSPI stocks rose against about 360 decliners, and on the KOSDAQ about 940 rose versus 650 that fell — a reminder that gains are not universal. With the index closing in on 7,000, market capitalization has grown to more than double GDP, reviving debate over the so-called Buffett Indicator and valuation risk. Still, last week's GDP print came in at roughly double the market's forecast, suggesting some of the re-rating may be backed by genuine improvement in the real economy rather than pure multiple expansion.

A notable mover was Hyundai Department Store, which surged nearly 16% to a new high, alongside traditional domestic-demand names like Hanwha Galleria and Lotte Shopping and food-and-beverage stocks. Analysts read this as a sign that domestic consumption may finally be catching up with Korea's export strength, broadening the recovery.

Goldman Sachs recently called a KOSPI target of 7,000 'obvious' and even conservative, pointing to semiconductors, AI infrastructure, corporate governance reform ('value-up'), defense, power equipment, shipbuilding — and, more unusually, K-culture stocks such as entertainment and gaming. Some saw the inclusion of K-culture, a sector many domestic investors view as already expensive, as a notable signal that foreign brokerages are entering a more active phase of 'selling' the Korea growth story to global clients.

Power Equipment and Consumer Names Deliver on Earnings

Hyosung Heavy Industries reported roughly 1.3 trillion won in revenue and about 150 billion won in operating profit, up 49% year-on-year, broadly in line with consensus. But confirmation of rising US exports and a thick order backlog sent the stock surging past 4 million won intraday, with one brokerage setting a 5-million-won price target. LS Electric also jumped more than 13% past the 250,000-won mark.

A high per-share price doesn't necessarily mean a stock is expensive. LS Electric previously carried out a 5-for-1 stock split that brought its share price down from around 1 million won to roughly 200,000 won, and subsequent earnings have continued to support the stock. Hyosung Heavy Industries is now seen as a split candidate too; if a split coincides with strong earnings, it could act as a double catalyst by boosting both liquidity and confirmed fundamentals. Even with an order backlog already stretching more than five years, global transformer demand is backlogged for years across markets like the US and Germany, so the pace of capacity expansion and follow-on orders remains the key variable.

Hotel Shilla's operating profit came in at about 20.4 billion won, far above the roughly 12 billion won forecast, sending shares sharply higher. Adding to the positive signal, President Lee Boo-jin made her first-ever open-market purchase of company shares in her own name, about 20 billion won, since becoming CEO in 2011, ahead of the earnings release. The stock is also benefiting from a structural shortage of hotel rooms in Seoul and a surge in inbound tourists, while the long-struggling duty-free business is showing signs of recovery led by K-beauty cosmetics, and the exit from Incheon Airport's duty-free operation has reduced a source of losses.

Beneficiaries of the inbound tourism boom named on the show include hotels (Hotel Shilla, GKL), casinos (Paradise, Kangwon Land), duty-free (Glonal Tax Free, Hotel Shilla), department stores and marts (Hyundai Department Store, Shinsegae, Lotte Shopping, E-mart), cosmetics makers, and aesthetic-medicine clinics.

Shipbuilders Await Earnings While a New Growth Story Emerges

Hanwha Ocean reports earnings today at 2 p.m., with Samsung Heavy Industries following on April 30 and HD Hyundai Heavy Industries on May 7. Shipbuilding stocks have cooled somewhat since late last year, but analysts broadly expect solid earnings this year and next, suggesting the recent pause reflects investors waiting for confirmation rather than a change in the underlying story.

A fresh narrative has also emerged: the large engines built into ships could potentially be repurposed to power data centers, linking shipbuilders to the AI infrastructure cycle. The hosts cautioned that such new narratives tend to invite excess enthusiasm, so it's worth watching the specifics that come out in earnings calls before taking the story too far.

This Week's US Big Tech Earnings Hinge on AI Capex

Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Alphabet, and Qualcomm report this week (after Wednesday's US close, early Thursday Korea time), followed by Apple, SanDisk, and Western Digital. The key variable isn't the earnings themselves so much as how much these companies plan to spend on AI-related capital expenditure.

Any increase in AI hardware investment from US Big Tech would flow directly into demand for Korean semiconductor and power-equipment names, making this week's earnings calendar a major swing factor for the local market.

Talking Investor Psychology With Professor Kim Kyung-il

Earlier in the show, the hosts placed friendly bets on SK Hynix's upcoming operating profit, guessing between 40 and 42 trillion won, and on the exact closing level on the day the KOSPI first closes above 7,000, with guesses clustering between 7,000 and 7,040, suggesting the hosts feel that milestone isn't far off.

The program's column segment featured psychologist Professor Kim Kyung-il discussing the relationship between psychology and investing. 'Fear is a reaction; courage is a decision,' he said, noting that most investors fail to separate the two and instead convert a momentary emotional reaction directly into a trade. He recommended a brief pause to acknowledge the emotion before acting on any decision.

On why investors struggle to cut losses, he explained that realizing a loss forces investors to confront failure, which is inherently painful. The remedy, he said, is to practice taking small losses repeatedly so the pain becomes more tolerable over time. On the flip side, rather than fixating on a target return and selling, he suggested that holding winners and even adding to them as they rise ('averaging up') can produce better long-term results than selling based on a percentage-gain rule.

On FOMO, the fear of missing a rally, he said reassurance alone rarely works, and that a more practical fix is having someone nearby help an investor buy in gradually rather than all at once. He noted that younger investors in their 20s and 30s are more prone to high-risk products like leveraged and inverse ETFs, partly because a short life experience makes it easy to mistake a recent trend for a permanent one. He closed by saying that keeping investing as a disciplined game rather than gambling requires both structural safeguards and someone willing to keep offering steady, persistent advice.