Cổ phiếu bán dẫn chip của Mỹ giảm không ngừng, rốt cuộc sẽ điều chỉnh đến khi nào?

The recent sell-off in the US memory chip sector can no longer be described simply as a "correction." Last night, former chip star stocks like SK Hynix, Micron, and SanDisk continued their collective decline. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX) has plummeted from a high of over 14,600 points a month ago to its current level of over 10,400 points.

Now, every investor is asking the same question: How much further will memory chips fall? Is the touted "All in AI" narrative still valid?

BIT Securities will provide an in-depth analysis to answer this major market concern.

1. A Technical Bear Market is Confirmed

The so-called technical bear market is a concept defined purely by price decline: when an index or asset falls 20% or more from a recent significant high, it is said to enter a technical bear market. It involves no fundamental judgment, only price.

Applying this to the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX), we can calculate the following figures:

• On June 22, the SOX hit an all-time closing high of 14,634.72 points.
• The bear market threshold is: 14,634.72 × 80% = 11,707.78 points.
• On July 17, the SOX closed at 11,673.89 points, officially breaking below the threshold and confirming a technical bear market. The index has since continued to decline, currently touching 10,447.49 points, moving further away from the threshold.

What does this number mean? It means that the narrative of "All in AI, blindly buy semiconductors" has, at least in the short term, become invalid. The market is no longer a unilateral logic of "buy the dip," but has entered a phase where risk needs to be reassessed.

2. A Bear Market Tells You How Much It Has Fallen, But Not How Long It Will Last

First, it must be clearly understood: a technical bear market is a "statement of fact," not a "predictive tool."

It tells you the index has fallen more than 20%, but it cannot answer "will it continue to fall, and where is the bottom?" Historically, some technical bear markets have been the starting point for V-shaped reversals, while others have been the opening act of deep bear markets. What makes the difference? The core issue lies in whether the source of selling pressure has been cleared.

Regarding the source of selling pressure for this round of memory chips, the market has almost reached a consensus – the South Korean stock market is undergoing a severe deleveraging process, and the memory chip sector is unlikely to stabilize until this deleveraging is complete.

Since the beginning of the year, Korean retail investors have been aggressively betting on leading stocks like Samsung and SK Hynix using credit financing and single-stock leveraged ETFs. The credit financing balance surged from 27.4 trillion Korean Won in early January to a peak of 38.6 trillion Korean Won on June 24.

However, the problem with leveraged ETFs lies in their mechanism: mandatory daily rebalancing, effectively "adding positions on up days and reducing them on down days." They act as amplifiers in an uptrend but become meat grinders when the trend reverses – a decline triggers margin calls, failure to meet margin calls leads to forced liquidation, and the selling pressure from liquidations causes further declines. This is a classic negative feedback spiral that, once started, is beyond human control.

3. When Will Deleveraging End? Watch These Three Signals

This is the truly core question. Investors should pay attention to the following three directly observable indicators:

• Signal 1: Credit Financing Balance. Peaked at 38.6 trillion KRW (June 24) → dropped to 32.7 trillion KRW by July 23, but the decline is far from sufficient. This indicator needs to stop falling and show a clear stabilization before suggesting that the clearing of leveraged positions is nearing its end.
• Signal 2: Forced Liquidation Amount. ~550.8 billion KRW in March → surged to 1.12 trillion KRW in June → dropped to 473.6 billion KRW in the first half of July. This is the most intuitive "bleeding" metric of deleveraging. It needs to continuously fall back to normal levels – for example, below a few hundred billion KRW per month – to indicate that the bleeding has stopped.
• Signal 3: Volatility Index VKOSPI. This is the "fear gauge" for the Korean stock market, calculated from the option prices of the KOSPI 200 index, measuring market expectations for sharp volatility over the next 30 days. During this panic, it once soared to 5 times the VIX level and is currently still high at 85.66. Only when it falls back to a normal range will it indicate that the "fear premium" embedded in market pricing has been squeezed out.

4. Final Conclusion: The Process Isn't Over, but Mid-to-Late Stage Characteristics Are Visible

Based on the latest market action, this deleveraging wave is clearly not over yet.

The KOSPI has triggered circuit breakers 9 times this year, with violent surges and plunges alternating – this is precisely a characteristic of the mid-to-late stage of deleveraging: the peak of panic selling has passed, selling pressure is beginning to wane, but the market structure is not yet stable, making it prone to violent swings at the slightest disturbance.

Let's summarize the points above:

First, the SOX breaking below the 11,707.78 point threshold confirms a technical bear market, ending the "All in AI" mindless narrative phase.

Second, the underlying driver of this decline is the forced clearing of leveraged funds in South Korea. The bottom depends not on where the price falls to, but on how far the deleveraging process has progressed.

Third, monitor the clearing progress via three signals: stabilization of the credit financing balance, return of forced liquidation amounts to normal levels, and the VKOSPI falling back to a normal range. Based on circuit breaker frequency and liquidation data, we are currently in the mid-to-late stage of deleveraging – the most panicked phase may be over, but the "unstable structure" means buying the dip here is still a left-side trade.

For market participants, what is truly useful at this stage is not predicting the bottom price point, but establishing a discipline of "signal confirmation": before signals stabilize, control positions and leverage; after signals are confirmed, then discuss positioning.

Given the complex market environment, BIT Securities' margin trading and options services provide traders with multi-dimensional risk management and capital efficiency enhancement paths:

Margin Trading: Utilizing margin buying can improve capital utilization during significant market pullbacks to participate in structural rebounds; utilizing margin short selling allows establishing short positions against targets directly affected by price wars or facing fundamental pressure, hedging downside portfolio risk.

Options: Traders can buy put options (Long Put) to build a downside protection net for their overall holdings, guarding against unexpected macro-negative events and liquidity shocks; they can also buy call options (Long Call) to participate in the elastic returns of high-beta assets with a limited and fixed cost.

Risk Warning: Historical data does not represent future performance. This article is only market observation and does not constitute investment advice. Please make independent judgments based on your own risk tolerance.