On July 7, 2026, the market was quickly labeled “Asia-Pacific Black Tuesday”: stock indices collectively fell on the same trading day from mainland China to South Korea and Japan. The three major indices in mainland China all fell that day, with the ChiNext Index down more than 2%, the Shanghai Composite Index down 1.53%, and the Shenzhen Component Index down 1.92%, with over 4,800 stocks closing down, exhibiting a typical pattern of “index + widespread individual stock” simultaneous decline; the South Korean market became the focal point of the shock, with the KOSPI Index plummeting approximately 8.03% to 7,405.11 points during the session, hitting and triggering the 2024 revised circuit breaker mechanism for the first time since the new regulations were introduced. Semiconductor leader SK Hynix fell over 10%, Samsung Electronics dropped over 9%, indicating that the memory chip sector was the first to bear the brunt of this round of sell-off. At the same time, Japan’s Nikkei 225 Index experienced a drop of approximately 2.00%, with risk appetite significantly cooling in major Asia-Pacific markets. On the blockchain asset side, the AI-related token TAO fell below the $210 level, trading at around $209.9, with a 24-hour drop of about 1.69%, echoing the pressures on the AI and memory chip sectors in the stock market. On that day, the capital flows in South Korea further amplified the characteristics of “emotional selling”: foreign capital net sold about $1.493 billion, while retail investors net bought against the trend about $1.522 billion, forming a clear pattern of “foreign capital fleeing, retail investors picking up”; coupled with the previous broad rise in AI chips and AI tokens, with expectations fully elevated, and Goldman Sachs having indicated that AI trading was shifting from broad speculation to refined stock picking, it can be preliminarily judged that the regional crash that day was not a single fundamental event, but more like a phase adjustment where funds, after accumulating high expectations, emotionally withdrew from chip and AI-related assets.
Scene of the Korean Circuit Breaker: Foreign Capital Fleeing and Retail Investors Hedging Intensely
During the session on July 7, the KOSPI tumbled downwards, with the decline rapidly expanding to about 8.03%, the index dipping to about 7,405.11 points, reaching the 2024 revised circuit breaker threshold. Under the new regulatory framework, trading is suspended for 20 minutes if it falls 8% or more from the previous closing price and remains there for 1 minute, marking the first time this rule has been triggered, with panic levels directly reflected on the board. From a component perspective, SK Hynix fell over 10%, Samsung Electronics down over 9%, leading to concentrated selling pressure accelerating the index's stampede towards the circuit breaker level, completing the feedback loop between institutional thresholds and sector-wide sell-off within a very short timeframe.
The capital aspect is more tense: on that day, foreign capital net sold about $1.493 billion, while South Korean retail investors net bought against the trend approximately $1.522 billion, almost forming a hedging structure of equivalent magnitude but entirely opposite direction. Even though the scale of retail investors' pickups was slightly larger than foreign capital's flight, the index still closed near the circuit breaker zone, indicating that the price impact had far surpassed what a single source of funds could hedge against. The structure of “foreign capital retreating, retail investors taking over” means, on one hand, that chips are rapidly transferring from entities and overseas funds that have a high risk aversion and more complete information, to local individual investors who are more sensitive to emotions; on the other hand, it also raises the elasticity of future volatility—in any new signal regarding chip prosperity or AI expectations, it becomes easier to amplify significant fluctuations on a retail-led board, and this funding structure itself is the core variable of risk and sentiment in the South Korean market for the time to come.
Memory Chips Under High Expectations: Concerns Over NVIDIA-style Consolidation
After a previous influx of funds and unanimous enthusiasm for the AI theme, the memory chip sector has found itself in a position that has “overdrawn” its expectations ahead of time. Researcher Jukan pointed out that the current market's earnings and prosperity judgments regarding memory chips are at a relatively high level, even if subsequent earnings reports exceed expectations, the stock prices may face pressure due to valuations and expectations being too saturated. More critically, this round of industry upward cycle driven by AI demand is still continuing on a fundamental level, but stock prices have shown stagnant growth or even corrections, forming a misalignment structure of “data moving upwards, prices declining or consolidating,” exemplified by SK Hynix dropping over 10% and Samsung Electronics down over 9% on July 7 in South Korea.
Jukan's warning directly addresses the price path risk behind this misalignment—memory chip stocks may repeat the historical trajectory of NVIDIA, where “fundamentals continue to innovate at high levels, yet stock prices remain stagnant for long periods.” The industry's strong cyclicality means that once the market begins to bet that the current AI-driven prosperity is nearing its peak, even if leading companies continue to deliver favorable performance, their stock prices would more easily choose to digest expectations with time rather than rise significantly again. Under the reality that South Korea's chip leader faces optimistic performance yet substantial declines, this “NVIDIA-style consolidation” scenario is no longer just a theoretical assumption but is being regarded by the market as a path risk that needs to be price effectively, suggesting that under conditions of extremely saturated expectations, the memory chip sector is more likely to take a long time to digest valuations at high levels rather than easily re-enter a trending uptrend.
Goldman Sachs Bullish on NVIDIA: AI Chip Trading Enters Stock Picking Era
While the market begins to price the “NVIDIA-style consolidation” risk seriously, Goldman Sachs in its latest report continues to maintain a “buy” rating on NVIDIA with a target price of $285, asserting that as one of the core assets in the AI chip track, NVIDIA's profitability and industrial status are still sufficient to support the current valuation range. Goldman Sachs explicitly pointed out that concerns regarding market share losses brought about by cloud providers developing their own AI chips and more competitors accelerating entry into the computing power market have been adequately reflected in existing valuations, implying that the transaction aspect no longer assumes NVIDIA can maintain a long-term monopoly, and instead factors in a certain degree of market share giving back as a baseline scenario. In other words, Goldman Sachs believes that the current stock price implies a path of “slowing growth but still high profitability,” rather than the former optimistic narrative of almost zero competition with continuously expanding market shares.
More importantly, Goldman Sachs places this judgment within a broader trading framework for AI assets: AI chip-related trading has entered a phase that emphasizes individual stock selection more, where investors are no longer simply “buying all AI concepts in a basket,” but are refining their pricing based on differences among companies in technology, product structure, and bargaining power. Previously, AI assets including NVIDIA and TAO had experienced significant collective rises, and recently began to show performance differentiation, indicating that thematic trading is shifting from “uniformly betting on AI” to “distinguishing who can truly turn AI dividends into sustained profits.” In this new phase, NVIDIA's valuation and expectation changes are not just narratives about its own stock price, but also a barometer for whether the entire AI asset sector can traverse high expectations and return to the constraints of fundamentals.
TAO and Other Crypto AI Assets Cooling: Retreat of the Basket Buying Era
Within the same risk window, on-chain AI assets also faced pressure simultaneously. As one of its representatives, TAO traded at around $209.9 on that day, with a 24-hour drop of about 1.69%, falling below the $210 level, an important price point recently. Compared to the severe volatility of stock indices and semiconductor leaders on that single day, TAO's drop is not extreme, but from a technical and emotional viewpoint, the breach of the integer level itself is a sign of “high expectations starting to retreat,” indicating that the cryptographic funds surrounding the AI narrative are also shrinking their risk exposures rather than simply continuing mass buys. It needs to be emphasized that the existing information does not point to a single project event triggering TAO's adjustment, but rather that it appears to be a part of a broader cooling context for risky AI assets, leading to a unified downgrade in thematic valuations.
When extending the timeline, this pullback sharply contrasts with the previous “basket buying” phase. Research briefs show that prior to July 7, 2026, various AI-related assets, including NVIDIA and TAO, experienced significant collective rises, with the market primarily betting on the “AI” label itself, rather than scrutinizing the differences in profitability and realization paths among different assets. Recently, Goldman Sachs' report explicitly stated that AI chip trading has moved from thematic broad rises to a phase focusing more on individual stock selection, while maintaining a “buy” rating on NVIDIA with a $285 target price, emphasizing that current valuations have adequately reflected the risks of market share loss due to self-developed chips and intensified competition. This logic from “buying stories” to “calculating accounts” is beginning to spill over into a broader spectrum of AI assets: on one side, traditional assets like NVIDIA, Samsung Electronics, and SK Hynix are experiencing stock price differentiation under high expectations; on the other side, crypto AI tokens like TAO are leading the return of previous gains within an overall contraction of risk sentiment, pointing collectively in one direction—that AI is no longer a unified theme that can be simply packaged for purchase, but rather broken down into specific assets that need to be individually verified.
Post-Black Tuesday Capital Direction: Risk Appetite and AI Valuation Repricing
From price and funding data, this impact is primarily a collective retreat targeting “high expectation growth assets.” The three major indices in mainland China all fell on July 7, with the ChiNext Index down more than 2%, the Shanghai Composite Index down 1.53%, and the Shenzhen Component Index down 1.92%, with over 4,800 stocks declining, indicating that the selling pressure was not concentrated in a few heavyweight stocks, but rather broadly clearing out growth and thematic positions; the Nikkei 225 Index's drop of about 2% on the same day extended this risk appetite cooling to a regional phenomenon across Asia-Pacific. The KOSPI's plunge of approximately 8.03% triggered a circuit breaker, providing a clear threshold at the regulatory level of “at what point will intervention be forced,” while foreign capital sold approximately $1.493 billion and retail investors net bought about $1.522 billion against the trend, concretizing this style shift into a structural change in “international capital eager to reduce high beta exposure, local funds trying to gamble on rebounds during panic.”
What is more noteworthy is that the capital did not simply retreat from the stock market, but instead propelled AI-related assets into a stage of valuation repricing through sector and asset differentiation. On one hand, the memory chip sector, which is in an upward cycle driven by AI demand, saw leading SK Hynix drop over 10% and Samsung Electronics fall over 9%, reinforcing the risks highlighted by Jukan: expectations have already been pushed to high levels, and regardless of whether subsequent earnings reports exceed expectations, stock prices may tend to operate more in a “digesting valuations” rather than “elevating valuations” paradigm. On the other hand, AI tokens like TAO saw their prices simultaneously retreat, with TAO trading around $209.9, down about 1.69% in 24 hours, resonating with the judgment of “entering a stock picking era”: AI thematic pricing is shifting from broad based rises to a fine differentiation between fundamentals and risk exposure. In the short term, the structure of concentrated foreign capital outflow and substantial retail investor pickups makes the South Korean chip and AI sectors more likely to exhibit “high volatility, news-driven” paths in the coming period; in the medium term, the cyclical properties of memory chips combined with high valuations lead funds to prefer thematic rotation and risk hedging between leading, cyclical sensitive varieties, and crypto assets when allocating in the AI chain. Within this framework, investors need to use scenarios and data to understand the fluctuations themselves, rather than viewing all AI-related assets as the same kind of risk exposure.
Join our community, let’s discuss together and become stronger together!
AiCoin Exclusive Hyperliquid Benefits: https://app.hyperliquid.xyz/join/AICOIN88
AiCoin Exclusive Aster Benefits: https://www.asterdex.com/zh-CN/referral/9C50e2
On-chain Telegram Community: https://t.me/AiCoinWhaleData
On-chain Community: https://www.aicoin.com/link/chat?cid=N6OVMor5g
AiCoin On-chain Twitter: https://x.com/aicoinwhaledata
免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。
