US Stock Market Move | Storage sector opens with general decline, SK Hynix (SKHY.US) falls more than 7% on the second day of trading.

On Monday, the storage sector opened with a general decline. SK Hynix (SKHY.US) dropped more than 7% on the second day of its listing, following a 12% rise on its first day. SanDisk (SNDK.US), Micron Technology, Inc. (MU.US), Western Digital Corporation (WDC.US), and Seagate Technology Holdings PLC (STX.US) all dropped by more than 6%. On the news front, the stock price of the South Korean storage chip giant SK Hynix fell by over 15% today, dragging the South Korean stock market down to a circuit breaker level and causing a collapse in Asian storage stocks. A report released by the South Korean brokerage firm Korea Investment Securities (KIS) is seen as the catalyst for the sharp decline in SK Hynix's stock price. In the latest report, KIS predicted that SK Hynix's operating profit for the second quarter of this year would be slightly below market expectations. Despite KIS's optimistic forecast for SK Hynix's second quarter performance, the operating profit forecast given by the firm is about 8% lower than the market consensus of 65 trillion Korean won. This sparked concerns among investors. KIS explained in the report that due to SK Hynix's high proportion of HBM revenue compared to its competitors, the average selling price (ASP) has increased less than the market average. This is because HBM is usually under long-term supply agreements with locked prices, so prices will not change significantly in the short term with market fluctuations. In contrast, when the market as a whole increases in price, traditional products like DRAM and NAND experience a larger increase in average selling price.