South Korea's stock market turned down first. How long can the US hold out? (Park Jong-hoon's Knowledge in One Shot)

The speaker reports that government bond yields are rising worldwide and US stock prices are near all-time highs, but only the KOSPI has plunged. Despite Samsung Electronics reporting operating profit of 107 trillion won for quarter 3, exceeding 100 trillion won for the first time ever, the KOSPI fell 2.6% on the announcement day. The speaker points out that over the four months since 6/22 the KOSPI fell 27%, whereas the Nasdaq rose 5% from its level in month 6 and reached an all-time high on 10/6. Taiwan and Japan are also near record highs, leaving South Korea alone experiencing major turmoil. The speaker says overlapping supply-and-demand factors could allow a rebound and accepts the end of share buybacks as a medium-term negative, but disagrees with interpreting 107 trillion won against a forecast of 110 trillion won as an earnings miss, identifying interest rates as the real negative that overshadowed the earnings. South Korea's 10-year yield rose from 2.7% to 4.3%, while on 10/7 US 10-year and 30-year yields exceeded 5.3% and 5.7%, respectively, reaching their highest levels in 24 years. Although measures by Secretary Bessent briefly lowered yields, the speaker explains that inflation and national debt make prolonged suppression difficult. The speaker says the bill for high interest rates arrives first for those with shorter maturities: a high-quality US company that issued 7-year debt at 2% in 2020 would have to refinance at 6% in 2027. In the past, cracks also began appearing with an 8~10-month lag after monetary tightening. There were places that collapsed first, such as Mexico in 1994 and the dot-com sector in 2000 and subprime in 2007 and SVB in 2023. Just as the S&P500 continued rising for four months after yields reached 5.26% in month 6 of 2007 and reached a new high in month 10, the speaker explains that what matters in the current combination of a 5.36% yield and a record-high Nasdaq is how long high interest rates persist. The speaker analyzes that South Korea was hit within a few months because its rate increase was larger and its maturities are the shortest in the world, including variable-rate household loans and 88% of corporate bonds having maturities of 3 years or less. Combined with the KOSPI's tendency to move ahead of other markets and foreign investors leaving preemptively, this caused it to turn down first. All directional forecasts are the speaker's conditional judgments, not statements establishing definitive short-term price predictions.