Before the “Semiconductor Winter” report… Hynix sold at Morgan Stanley counter

Korea Exchange begins account analysis work
The day before the report, 1.01 million shares were sold, three times the normal number.

The Korea Exchange has started an investigation into Morgan Stanley. This is due to the ‘pre-trade suspicion’ that Morgan Stanley sold a large amount of Hynix stock through its own window before issuing a sell opinion report that lowered SK Hynix’s target stock price to big

According to the financial investment industry on the 20th, the headquarters of the exchange market research began to analyze accounts for Morgan Stanley executing orders to sell SK Hynix stocks on the 13th. However, the explanation is that this is a standard way to raise suspicion, and no allegations of fraud have yet been found.

Morgan Stanley published a report titled ‘Winter is Coming’ on the 15th and reduced SK Hynix’s target price by more than half from 260,000 won to 120,000 won. The investment sentiment was also downgraded by two notches from ‘overweight’ to ‘underweight’.

On the 13th, the trading day before the report was published, a sell order for 1,011,719 shares of SK Hynix stock was placed at the counter of the Morgan Stanley Seoul branch. This was an unusual amount, three times what was sold on the 12th (351,228 shares).

For this reason, although suspicions have arisen in the market, opinions are raised within and outside the industry that it is difficult to conclude that a pre-trade took place simply because place the order at the Morgan Stanley counter. If the Central Office of Trade Market Research finds any suspicion of future pre-trade, it intends to transfer the matter to the Financial Investigation Service.

Meanwhile, when Morgan Stanley lowered its target price, SK Hynix’s stock price fell to 6.14% on the 19th.