Short U.S. Market Update - July 13, 2026
Hello back after the weekend ! So KOSPI did crash once again
So, where do we stand. The S&P 500 closed Friday at 7,575.39, up 0.42% and back within half a percent of the record close of 7,609.78 it set on 2 June. Then Seoul opened, and the mood changed. Furthermore, war in Iran escalates everyday - and is at the point of full rocket exchange. This morning the S&P 500 is indicated around 7,552 in pre-market, Nasdaq 100 futures are the weak spot at roughly 1% lower, and the VIX has jumped about 9% to 16.40 after finishing Friday at 15.03.
Korea did the damage overnight
The KOSPI closed at 6,806.93, down 8.95%, or 669 points, in a session that tripped a sell-side program curb in the morning and a full 20-minute circuit breaker in the afternoon. It was the seventh circuit breaker on that market this year. The index has not traded below 7,000 since early May.
Two names did most of it. SK hynix fell 15.37% and Samsung Electronics fell 10.7%, and together they are more than 60% of the index. The trigger was almost comic in its timing: SK hynix listed its ADRs on the Nasdaq on Friday and popped 13%, and then Seoul sold the news, helped along by a broker note arguing second-quarter operating profit will land short of consensus. The rest of Asia leaned the same way, with the Nikkei down 1.92% and the CSI 300 down 1.79%.
Today is not really the story, though. The story is where the index has ended up: roughly 25% below its June closing peak of 9,114, and about 27% below the record intraday high of 9,385 set on 19 June. That damage is already done and paid for. From here I would expect Seoul to chop sideways, up and down, rather than fall in another straight line, but a quarter of the index does not come back because of two green days.
The other half of the story is Iran
Over the weekend the U.S. and Iran traded strikes again, Iran declared the Strait of Hormuz closed until further notice, and CENTCOM and the White House said flatly that it is open and that traffic is flowing. Vessel counts through the strait have collapsed to single digits a day against thirty or forty last week, so the real answer is probably somewhere in between, and closer to technically open but practically frozen.
Oil did what oil does. Brent is near $79 and WTI near $74, both up around 3% this morning. That is a risk premium, not a supply shock yet, and it is why U.S. equity futures are only mildly red while a chip-heavy, energy-importing market like Korea got hit for nine percent.
The levels that matter today
