Yen Hits Seven-Month High, Surging Past 152 Per Dollar

* 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. $1 = 152 Yen: Some Forecast Further Gains in the Japanese Currency

- Key points: The yen-dollar rate touched 152.89 intraday in the Tokyo foreign exchange market on the 8th, putting the yen at its strongest level in about seven months since mid-February this year. That surpassed the 156-157 range that marked the lows at the time of Japanese authorities' first intervention in late April and a second, coordinated U.S.-Japan intervention in late July, prompting analysts to say the yen has entered a sustained upward phase. The prospect of successive Bank of Japan rate hikes and expectations that Japan's Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF) will expand investment in domestic assets spurred the unwinding of short yen positions, while a pause in dollar preference tied to Middle East developments also pushed the yen higher. In addition, revised second-quarter real gross domestic product data released by Japan's Cabinet Office that day was upgraded to 0.4% growth from the previous quarter, adding justification for a rate increase.

2. KOSPI Slips Again Just Short of 7,000: "Oil and Rate Pressures Must Ease"

- Key points: The KOSPI recovered the 7,000 mark intraday for the first time in 15 trading sessions and at one point climbed to the 7,100 level, but failed to settle above 7,000 on a closing basis. According to the Korea Exchange on the 8th, the KOSPI ended at 6,954.52, down 40.87 points, or 0.58%, from the previous session. International oil prices rose on conflict between the United States and Iran along with news of a strike on Saudi Arabian oil facilities, while trade friction between the United States and Canada pressured investor sentiment. Market attention is now turning to the U.S. producer price index for August on the 10th, the consumer price index on the 11th and the September Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) rate decision. Foreign investors bought a net 3.7058 trillion won over four trading sessions starting on the 3rd of this month, while individuals sold 14.5486 trillion won worth of shares, leaving supply and demand tightly contested.

3. "Covered Calls and Bonds Are Not Wise; Single-Stock Leverage Cannot Cause a Market Crash"

- Key points: Matthew Tuttle, chief executive of Tuttle Capital Management, expressed skepticism about bonds and covered call strategies on the 8th, proposing put credit spreads as an alternative that secures cash flow while leaving room for share prices to rise. He said that given the enormous debt burden, real inflation in the United States runs at 11% to 12%, making a rise in long-term interest rates inevitable, and declared bonds an uninvestable asset until yields reach that level. Responding to claims that single-stock leveraged exchange-traded funds were the main culprit behind the sharp fall in Korean stocks, he countered that the products did not amplify volatility but rather that investor demand led to their launch. As the next promising theme, he pointed to networking, a bottleneck in AI infrastructure, and identified photonics, which handles chip-to-chip connections, as the decisive battleground.

4. Big Tech Strikes $2 Trillion in Deals While Korea Focuses on Value-Up

- Key points: While global Big Tech carries out massive mergers and acquisitions in artificial intelligence, power and infrastructure, deals worth more than 5 trillion won have vanished entirely among Korean conglomerates. According to investment banking industry sources and Samil PwC, global M&A transaction value in the first half of this year reached $2.003 trillion (about 2,688 trillion won), a 42% surge from a year earlier, with megadeals of $5 billion or more accounting for 40% of the total. SpaceX's acquisition of Anysphere ($60 billion), Google's acquisition of Wiz ($32 billion) and Nvidia's acquisition of Hugging Face (about $12.9 billion) were cited as leading examples. By contrast, apart from Samsung Electronics (005930) acquiring Germany's ZF advanced driver assistance systems division and Flakt Group for a combined 3 billion euros (about 4.68 trillion won), major groups including SK, Hyundai Motor (005380), LG (003550), Lotte and Hanwha (000880) have gone years without a global deal.

5. "Everyone's Bringing a Straw": Holding 325 Trillion Won but Watching M&A From the Sidelines

- Key points: Cash and cash equivalents at the main affiliates of five conglomerates totaled 325.1 trillion won in the first half of this year, a 110.4% surge from 154.5 trillion won in the first half of last year. Samsung Electronics held 190 trillion won and SK hynix (000660) 88 trillion won, bringing the two companies' combined cash to about 278 trillion won, while Hyundai Motor secured 27.8 trillion won, LG Electronics (066570) 10.1 trillion won and Hanwha Aerospace (012450) 9.2 trillion won in firepower. Yet much of that cash is being directed toward shareholder returns and internal compensation, as the government's value-up policy stance, pressure from domestic and foreign activist funds and union demands for higher performance bonuses converge. Meanwhile, global M&A deals in AI and information technology totaled about $641 billion (about 862.4 trillion won) in the first half of this year, up 80% from the same period a year earlier, in stark contrast.

6. Earnings Expectations Jump as Chemicals, Construction and Insurance Draw Attention

- Key points: Profit forecasts for the chemicals, construction and insurance sectors were revised upward for both this year and next. According to FnGuide on the 8th, 14 of the 22 KOSPI sectors saw net profit estimates for both 2026 and 2027 raised over the past month, with chemicals up 7.92% and 8.32% and insurance up 9.02% and 13.30%, placing them among the largest upward revisions. Naphtha prices fell 15.9% last month while prices of key products such as low- and high-density polyethylene (LDPE and HDPE) rose 5% to 11%; improved investment returns from rising long-term interest rates; and expanded housing supply along with AI data center and power grid investment each supported expectations in the respective sectors. However, the year-on-year growth rate for the KOSPI's projected 12-month net profit fell 8 percentage points from a peak of 328% last month, making profitability metrics a key variable in selecting sectors.