KOSPI Nears 7,000 on Chip Rally; Goldman Sees 12,000

* Editor's note: AI PRISM (Personalized Report & Insight Summarizing Media) is an artificial intelligence-based personalized news recommendation and summary service developed with support from the Korea Press Foundation. It selects and provides six news items tailored to each reader type.

1. KOSPI Nears 7,000 on Chip Blaze; Goldman Says "12,000 Is Coming"

Key summary: The KOSPI surged 4.61% to close at 6,995.39, with Samsung Electronics (+5.68%, 270,000 won) and SK hynix (+8.26%, 1.783 million won) posting their biggest gains in about three weeks. OpenAI's unveiling of Astra and Nvidia's acquisition of Hugging Face fueled expectations for memory demand. Strength spread to materials, parts and equipment names including Doosan Tesna (+11.31%) and Psk Holdings (+8.33%). Goldman Sachs said the KOSPI's forward price-to-earnings ratio stands at just 5.3 times, leaving ample room for further gains to 12,000 points if earnings forecasts are met.

2. A 3D Game Built in 45 Minutes With a Few Prompts: "The Astra Moment Is Coming"

Key summary: GPT-6 Astra, which Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said has reached artificial general intelligence, has begun rolling out to ordinary subscribers paying $20 a month, accelerating the mainstreaming of AI agents. Astra cleared Pokemon FireRed in 18 hours and 12 minutes, a marked leap from its predecessors GPT-5.6 Sol (96 hours) and GPT-5.5 (failed after more than 200 hours). The "recurrent depth" approach repeats computations until a goal is met, and is seen as a structural driver lifting demand for HBM and ultra-high-speed networks. OpenAI's next model is set to use 400,000 GPUs, four times the number used to train Astra, adding weight to forecasts of expanding demand for semiconductor infrastructure.

3. Chip ETFs Top 7 Trillion Won; Rebalancing Pressure in Focus

Key summary: Net assets of ETFs tracking the KRX Semiconductor Index (KODEX Semiconductor, KODEX Semiconductor Leverage and TIGER Semiconductor) stood at 7.676 trillion won as of the 4th of this month, more than seven times the 1.054 trillion won a year earlier, magnifying the supply-demand impact of this month's regular rebalancing. With the weightings of SK hynix (36.9%) and Samsung Electronics (23.1%) both above the 20% cap, Samsung Securities estimated combined mechanical selling demand of 1.7 trillion won. Rebalancing trades will be concentrated at the closing price on the 10th of this month, the expiration date for September futures and options, with the revised index to take effect from the 11th. With average daily KOSPI trading value plunging from 50 trillion won in June to 20 trillion won this month, analysts warned that large one-directional orders during a period of reduced liquidity could amplify short-term volatility.

4. Anthropic Locks In a Decade of Computing Ahead of IPO, Competing With OpenAI on Infrastructure

Key summary: Anthropic has signed computing capacity contracts totaling 14.8 gigawatts and $517 billion (about 700 trillion won) over the past 11 months, putting its infrastructure competitiveness in the spotlight ahead of a listing expected between late October and early November. The company has struck a series of deals, including more than $300 billion over 10 years with Amazon and Google, as well as large contracts with Microsoft and SpaceX. Samsung Electronics is expected to play a role in foundry work and in manufacturing Anthropic's in-house chips, while SK hynix has already signed an HBM4 supply contract with Nvidia, a key Anthropic partner. OpenAI also plans to spend $750 billion on 30 gigawatts by 2030, and analysts said the infrastructure race between the two companies will serve as a medium- to long-term boost to orders for Korean chipmakers.

5. "It Was the Market's Safety Net": Rush Into Stocks Pushes Treasury Bond Yields Higher

Key summary: Major life insurers including Samsung, Hanwha (000880.KS), Kyobo and Shinhan Life have all scaled back holdings of government and public bonds as money moves into a rising stock market, shaking the bond market's traditional safety net. The yield on 30-year treasury bonds has risen 0.168 percentage points since the Bank of Korea began raising its base rate, a far steeper move than the 0.036 percentage point rise in three-year yields, in a bear steepening. Concerns are also mounting that upward pressure on yields will persist structurally, with the government setting next year's total spending at a record 820.9 trillion won and increasing net treasury bond issuance to 96.3 trillion won. KB Securities warned that with insurers' duration gaps having turned positive, further rate increases could prompt them to sell ultra-long-dated bonds, opening a vicious cycle that accelerates the rise in yields.

6. Expanded Buybacks and a 10-Year Auction: U.S. Treasury Yields on the Brink

Key summary: On the 9th, immediately after the U.S. Labor Day holiday, the Treasury Department will hold a $39 billion auction of 10-year notes while also doubling its long-dated buyback size to $4 billion per operation from $2 billion, entering a period in which yield volatility could peak. BofA forecast that September investment-grade corporate bond issuance would reach $190 billion, the second-highest on record, and said a further rush of issuance by hyperscalers raising funds for AI investment could push the figure to $250 billion. As the Trump administration's fiscal consolidation plans falter, a compound rate shock is under way, with two-year yields rising as the fallout from the war with Iran stokes inflation and 30-year yields surging on long-term fiscal concerns. Standard Chartered warned of "turmoil from Labor Day through Christmas," and analysts said global rate jitters could feed into volatility in Korea's bond market and stock market.

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