A row of toppled dominoes shaped like smartphones and memory chips cascading across a trading floor desk, with a scattered pile of funeral wreath petals in the foreground, close-up shot from a low angle, cold blue screen light from above mixed with a faint red glow, deep shadows and shallow depth of field.

South Korea's Leverage Bomb Blows a $2tn Hole in the Kospi

By Oliver BennsAugust 3, 2026

South Korea's Kospi has shed roughly $2tn in market value, with the index swinging 22% down and 15% back up inside a week as single-stock leveraged ETFs unwound. The products, launched in May to track Samsung and SK Hynix at up to 5x daily returns, tripled in assets in a month before Samsung fell 32% and SK Hynix 40%. Retail investors, who hold 92% of the funds, are down $39bn, and 3.4% of the adult population has received a margin call. Regulators have now frozen new listings.

Microsoft and Amazon Rip Higher as AI Revenue Finally Shows Up

Microsoft jumped 16% and Amazon 14% after earnings, their strongest single-day gains in years. Microsoft's cloud revenue rose 43% and Copilot hit 30m paid seats, while AWS grew 37%, its fastest pace in five years. Meta fell 8% and Apple 7% as investors questioned capex plans running to $145bn and $205bn across the group.

Anthropic Stake Quietly Powers 85% of Amazon's Net Income

$53bn of Amazon's $63bn in net income last quarter came from mark-to-market gains on its Anthropic stake, with a similar dynamic at Alphabet, where 87% of combined net income traced to Anthropic and SpaceX marks. Stripping out the private investments, Amazon's P/E is closer to 30 than the reported 19, and Alphabet's around 31, muddying the cheapest-looking multiples in big tech.

Situational Awareness Fund Blows Up on 5x AI Leverage

Leopold Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness hedge fund, up 439% year-to-date on concentrated AI and chip bets, was margin called after running 5x leverage and forced to liquidate its entire public book. Citadel is understood to have absorbed the positions, including longs in SK Hynix and shorts in Adobe. The fund is also said to be selling its Anthropic stake.