The bank said position and leverage unwinds, rather than weaker fundamentals, drove the recent slide as AI servers, cloud spending and memory demand continue to anchor the trade.
Goldman Sachs said on Aug. 6 that the recent selloff in Korean AI-related stocks has gone too far and did not warrant a change in its view, keeping an overweight stance on Korean equities. The bank continues to see the memory cycle as the core support for the rally, arguing that the decline reflected position and leverage unwinds more than any break in the underlying thesis. That thesis remains centered on AI computing demand lifting DRAM, HBM (high-bandwidth memory chips) and NAND. Goldman said AI servers, cloud providers' capital spending and demand for HBM are creating a longer-lasting supply-demand squeeze, and that markets have not fully priced in a scenario in which memory shortages persist until 2030. Because memory manufacturers have high operating leverage (profits rising faster than sales), sustained pricing strength could quickly amplify earnings. Goldman said that helps explain why it remains constructive even after the sharp drop in Korean equities. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix together account for about half of the KOSPI (South Korea's benchmark stock index) weighting, making the Korean market effectively a high-beta expression of the global AI hardware cycle. For U.S. equity investors, the same logic could spill over to Micron, SanDisk, Western Digital and the semiconductor equipment supply chain. Goldman added that while volatility in AI stocks has intensified recently, memory remains one of the most direct beneficiaries within AI infrastructure as long as cloud providers do not meaningfully slow capital spending.