Goldman Sachs: Semiconductors' Influence on Financial Markets Now Far Exceeds Oil

Cailian Press Financial News Agency

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① Over the past three weeks, movements in the semiconductor sector can explain about 54% of the performance differences across various assets, far exceeding the explanatory power of oil prices; ② The South Korean stock market is particularly sensitive to the AI trading trend, with memory chip stocks now accounting for nearly half the weight of the KOSPI.

Cailian Press, October 27 (Editor Liu Rui) — As the AI boom continues, attention across global financial asset markets has shifted from the traditional fluctuations of commodity markets to the fluctuations of AI-related concept stocks.

Goldman Sachs says artificial intelligence has become an extremely influential force in global financial markets. Today, semiconductor stocks' influence on price swings across major asset classes far exceeds that of oil prices.

Chip moves sway the entire market

On Monday this week, Goldman Sachs analysts published a research report saying: "The tech sector's role in driving market risk appetite is continuing to rise."

The bank's research found that over the past three weeks, movements in the semiconductor sector can explain about 54% of the performance differences across various assets, while oil prices explain only 2% of asset performance.

Goldman Sachs' findings also reflect that investor sentiment across global asset classes is now extremely closely tied to tech stocks. This correlation has strengthened continuously in recent years, and the bank's risk appetite indicator has recently moved almost in sync with the relative performance of large tech stocks.

Last week, as US tech stocks and corporate bonds were sold off, Goldman Sachs' gauge of investors' willingness to take on risk briefly fell to its lowest level since April 2025.

However, Goldman Sachs strategists noted that market sentiment has not yet fallen to the range that has historically been suitable for buying.

On Monday this week, market sentiment saw a fairly clear turning point: as Anthropic filed for an IPO, bullish enthusiasm for AI-related stocks was reignited, and the US stock market rebounded in response. Both the Nasdaq Composite and the S&P 500 rose, Nvidia gained more than 2%, and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index climbed 3%.

This rally spread to Asian markets on Tuesday. The KOSPI rose as much as 5% intraday, Samsung Electronics gained as much as 6%, and SK Hynix rose as much as 8% at one point.

As memory stocks led by SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics have recently pulled back, the KOSPI has now fallen about 40% cumulatively from its June high. Selling pressure has also spread to targets outside South Korea's chip industry.

Goldman Sachs estimates that, excluding the memory chip sector, the valuation discount of other South Korean stocks relative to their own earnings levels exceeds 30%.

"Out of risk-aversion moves, market concerns about the memory sector have spilled over into the whole market," Goldman Sachs analysts said in another research report on Sunday.

The bank believes South Korean stocks are clearly oversold and cut its 12-month target for the KOSPI to 9,000 from 12,000, though that target still implies more than 60% upside from the level when the report was published.

"Current market pricing has factored in overly pessimistic fundamental expectations," Goldman Sachs strategists said.

Cailian Press statement: The content of this article is for reference only and does not constitute investment advice. Investors who act on it do so at their own risk.

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