SK Hynix's own chairman had one message for panicking investors: stop trading, just hold. (July 17, 2026)

By Mia Park · Korea Desk · July 17, 2026

Key points

SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won told investors Friday to stop trading SK Hynix and just hold it.
He said it a day after the stock fell 11.5% in Seoul and its Nasdaq shares (SKHY) fell another 13.7% overnight.
By Friday afternoon, SKHY was already green, up more than 5% in New York trading.
Taiwan's TSMC posted record AI-driven profit the same week, but it did not stop the broader memory-chip selloff.

I have written about this stock swinging wildly several times this week already, and today it got a new character in the story: the chairman himself. On Friday, with Korea's own market shut for a holiday, SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won stood up at a business forum and told nervous investors, in plain words, to stop trading SK Hynix (000660.KS) and just hold it. He said it a day after the stock fell 11.5% in Seoul, and after its week-old Nasdaq shares fell another 13.7% once trading opened in New York. By Friday afternoon, those Nasdaq shares were already green, up more than 5%.

A rough Thursday, and a scarier overnight

SK Hynix closed Thursday at 1,842,000 won, down 11.5%. It had plunged 15.4% the Monday before, then climbed back two days in a row and nearly recovered the week's losses, before Thursday erased that recovery in one session. This is a pattern I already wrote about after Thursday's broader Kospi crash: this stock does not move in a straight line lately.

The bigger shock came later. SK Hynix began trading American depositary receipts on the Nasdaq under the ticker SKHY earlier this month, and I wrote about how those shares can move by a different amount than the Seoul stock in the same day, because they trade in a different currency, different hours, and a different set of investors. On Thursday, hours after Seoul had already closed down 11.5%, SKHY fell another 13.7% once New York trading opened. I explained the mechanics of that gap here a few days ago, back when the Nasdaq shares were jumping, not falling.

It was not just Korea. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, known as TSMC, reported record profit for the quarter this week, with net profit up 77.4% from a year ago on strong demand for AI chips, and it raised its full year revenue growth forecast to above 40%. That kind of result would normally lift chip stocks everywhere. Instead, chip and memory stocks in the United States fell anyway, on worry that AI infrastructure spending has gotten ahead of itself. Our US markets desk covered how that selloff spread through the American chip sector the same day, if you want the fuller picture there.

Japan felt it too. Kioxia, a Japanese memory chip maker, fell as much as 16% intraday to 52,110 yen, less than half the all time high of 112,700 yen it had set about a month earlier, after a Texas jury ordered it to pay Viasat 229 million dollars over a computer memory patent, on top of the broader selloff. Kioxia called the verdict completely unacceptable and said it would appeal.

The chairman's message: just hold

Friday, while Seoul's exchange stayed closed for Constitution Day, Chey Tae-won spoke at the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry's summer forum at a hotel in Seogwipo, on Jeju Island, in front of roughly 900 business leaders, during a panel about AI and Korea's economy. Asked, in effect, what he would tell someone scared about their SK Hynix shares, he did not dodge it.

"I don't know where the stock price will be next month either, but rather than buying and selling repeatedly, simply holding onto it is a better way to preserve your wealth," he said.

He explained why he expects the stock to recover given time: "Memory chips will continue to be needed, so their value will trend upward over time." He compared the current state of AI demand to a small child: "AI is still like a 4 year old child. But for it to grow into an adult, it will inevitably need memory." On the wild swings themselves, he was fairly direct about the stock having run ahead of reality at times: "Prices rise when the outlook improves, and they fall when it seems less promising. Because it has risen too quickly, there are times when reality needs to catch up."

Why his word carries weight here

SK Hynix is not just another chipmaker to Korean investors right now. It is Nvidia's main supplier of high bandwidth memory, the chips that go into AI accelerators, and that business has driven record earnings and a stock that is still up more than 170% since the start of the year, even after this month's swings. In June, the run got so strong that SK Hynix briefly passed Samsung Electronics as Korea's most valuable listed company for first time in 26 years, before Samsung took the spot back a day later. A stock that moves that fast on the way up tends to move fast on the way down too. I wrote about why Samsung and SK Hynix together, and the leverage traders use around them, make the whole Kospi swing so hard, in more detail here. Regulators are already trying to calm that leverage down, with new deposit rules on the leveraged ETFs tracking both stocks set to take effect next month.

Retail investors seem to believe him, so far

On Korean stock forums Friday, the mood was a mix of dread and relief. Some traders said they were dreading Monday, when Seoul reopens and has to catch up with whatever happened on Wall Street while the market was closed. Others were posting screenshots of Chey's comments with messages along the lines of trusting him, and joking that the holiday itself had saved them a day of watching the chart.

There is an early, real signal worth watching before Monday. Even with Seoul shut, SKHY kept trading in New York on Friday, and by early afternoon it was up more than 5% from Thursday's close, clawing back part of the overnight drop. That is not proof the selloff is over. But it is the first piece of price action since the chairman spoke, and so far it is moving the direction he predicted.

Sources

Figures in this piece are sourced from Korea Exchange and Nasdaq trading data, South Korean and international financial media, and public remarks by SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won. This is not investment advice.

Frequently asked questions

Why did SK Hynix stock fall this week?

SK Hynix fell 11.5% in Seoul on Thursday, July 16, 2026, part of a broader memory chip selloff that also hit Japan's Kioxia, even after Taiwan's TSMC reported record AI driven profit the same week. Its Nasdaq shares (SKHY) fell another 13.7% once US trading opened that day.

What did SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won say about the stock?

Speaking at a Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry forum in Jeju on July 17, 2026, Chey told investors that rather than buying and selling repeatedly, simply holding onto the stock is a better way to preserve wealth, citing continued AI driven demand for memory chips.

Is SK Hynix's Nasdaq stock (SKHY) different from its Seoul listed shares?

Yes. SKHY is an American depositary receipt that began trading on the Nasdaq in July 2026, representing the same company as SK Hynix's main listing in Seoul (000660.KS), but the two can move by different amounts in the same day because they trade in different currencies, hours, and investor bases.

Did the selloff affect other memory chip makers outside Korea?

Yes. Japan's Kioxia fell as much as 16% intraday the same week, adding a 229 million dollar US patent verdict to the broader pressure on memory stocks, and several US listed chip and memory stocks fell too despite TSMC's strong earnings.

Mia Park · Korea Desk

Mia Park was born and raised in Korea and covers its markets and news for AIStockWire, from the Kospi to Samsung and SK Hynix. She got her start writing for a Korean entertainment blog, a long way from stock filings, but she has always liked knowing what is happening back home before anyone else does.