[Good Morning Market] KOSPI Expected to Open Higher on Strong Nasdaq and Falling U.S. Treasury Yields

On the 10th, the Korean stock market is expected to open higher, boosted by the strength of the Nasdaq and a decline in U.S. Treasury yields.

An employee in the dealing room at Hana Bank's Seoul headquarters is monitoring the stock market and exchange rates as the KOSPI opened up more than 4% on the 9th. That day the KOSPI opened at 5,299.10, up 4.13% from the previous trading day, marking the highest opening level ever, and the KOSDAQ opened at 1,109.91, up 2.7%.

February 9, 2026 Reporter Cho Yongjun

The previous day in New York, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 50,135.87, up 20.20 points (0.04%) from the previous session. The large-cap S&P 500 Index rose 32.52 points (0.47%) to 6,964.82, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Index ended the session at 23,238.67, up 207.46 points (0.9%).

The U.S. stock market the previous day was led higher by major artificial intelligence (AI) names such as Oracle (+9.6%), Microsoft (+3.1%), and Nvidia (+2.5%), as concerns over the profitability of AI companies came to be seen as excessive. The New York Federal Reserve’s 1-year inflation expectations also slowed, from 3.4% in December to 3.1% last month, fueling gains centered on growth stocks.

In the market, negative views on the more than 600 billion dollars in large-scale investments planned this year by AI hyperscalers are receding. Considering the solid growth in their core businesses and robust cash flows, sentiment is shifting toward the view that the recent share-price correction was excessive. This is also supported by the fact that the funding cost on Alphabet’s 20 billion dollars in corporate bonds, issued to finance AI investments, fell from 1.2% to 0.95% the previous day. Although questions remain about the recovery of these large-scale investments, the downside risk for share prices of related U.S. AI hyperscalers and software names does not appear to be significant.

The earnings outlook for the S&P 500 this year also remains solid. The net profit margin for the fourth quarter of last year reached 13.2%, the highest quarterly level on record, and it is expected to exceed that level this year.

The Korean stock market today is projected to open higher, supported by the strength of the Nasdaq led by U.S. AI stocks the previous day and by news that the yield on the U.S. 10-year Treasury fell below the 4.2% range as inflation expectations eased. During intraday trading, there is likely to be profit-taking pressure following the previous day’s surge, but the market is expected to show sector differentiation driven by individual companies’ earnings events.

There are growing concerns that daily volatility is steadily increasing. The KOSPI soared more than 4% the previous day, and as daily volatility expands, the difficulty of responding to the market is also rising. The KOSPI 200 Volatility Index (V-KOSPI), a gauge of volatility in the Korean stock market, has averaged 49.8 points since February, a sharp contrast with last year’s average of 24.1 points.

The weakening of upward momentum in earnings consensus is adding to the increase in volatility. The monthly change rate in this year’s operating-profit consensus for the KOSPI accelerated from +3.5% in December last year to +28.1% last month, but has slowed to +2.3% so far this month. However, this slowdown in earnings momentum is not expected to last long. It is seen as a natural development following a series of upward revisions by domestic and foreign securities firms after semiconductor companies reported their earnings late last month.

Han Ji-young, a researcher at Kiwoom Securities, said, "The burden from the early-year surge has not been fully resolved yet, and given the external uncertainties, investors still need to prepare for additional corrections," but added, "I see the nature of the correction as being limited to a mid-to-high single-digit percentage, rather than more than 10% from the peak, and more in the form of a time correction."