South Korea’s Kospi gained for a second consecutive session as semiconductor shares attracted buying, but retail investors purchased more than 200 billion won ($147.7 million) of inverse ETFs, which are designed to profit when an index declines. From September 7 through 10:55 a.m. on September 8, individual investors’ largest net purchase on the benchmark KOSPI market was 107.4 billion won ($79.3 million) of KODEX Inverse, followed by 97.2 billion won ($71.8 million) of KODEX 200 Futures Inverse 2X. Brokerages said expanding AI investment could lift demand for HBM4, server DDR5 and enterprise SSDs, naming Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix as key beneficiaries. KB Securities Head of Research Kim Dong-won said U.S.-China competition in AI technology and data-center investment would support memory demand from next year.