The report that cut SK hynix's target the hardest still points above today's price

The report that put the lowest target on SK hynix in Korea cut it again on July 29, and even that lowered target sits above where the stock closed that day. Lee Min-hee of BNK Investment & Securities took his target from 1.85 million won to 1.48 million. The close that day was 1.401 million.

From 2.98m to 1.24m won: SK hynix falls 60% from its high (Herald Business, 2026-07-29)

출처: biz.heraldcorp.com

Why cutting a target counts as a sell

Korean brokerages find it very hard to publish an outright sell rating. So leaving the rating alone and cutting the price target is what functions as a sell signal. Semiconductor analyst Jukan attached the same explanation to this cut. Lee's reasoning is about demand. Consumer conditions are weakening and memory spot prices are falling, while the large cloud operators are shifting spending from premium parts toward price-per-performance. The stock, he wrote, has already been pushed to the bottom of its earnings-based valuation band; it looks oversold in the short run, but any bounce should be limited.

The analyst who called the SK hynix drop cuts again to 1.48m won: "oversold, but" (iNews24, 2026-07-29)

출처: inews24.com

Where are the other targets

Mirae Asset Securities cut its target the same day, from 4.2 million won to 2.8 million. That is still double the price of a 1.4 million won stock. DS Investment & Securities held its 3.1 million won target and kept a buy rating. The cutters and the holders split, but they point the same way. Every domestic target sits above the current price.

Is this selloff the exception

The Korea Capital Market Institute went through roughly 740,000 analyst reports covering the 25 years from 2000 to 2024. Buy and strong buy accounted for 93.1 percent of them, and targets were actually reached 19 percent of the time. The gap between the return implied by the target and the return that actually arrived has averaged about 30 percentage points since 2015.

Nine in ten brokerage reports say buy; targets are hit 19% of the time (Seoul Shinmun, 2026-05-04)

출처: seoul.co.kr

A target above the price is not something this selloff created. It has held for 25 years. The drop was fast enough this time that the gap became visible.

The same 1.48 million splits depending on whether you treat it as a benchmark for the price or as the default setting of a research report.

So what settles it

The question comes down to one thing. Is the gap between target and price room to recover, or a target that has not finished falling. If the targets in the reports still to come drop below the price at that moment, the market was right first. If the stock climbs back above 1.48 million, this cut landed near the bottom. It is worth reading where a number came from alongside the number itself. In a market where saying sell is difficult, how often and how far a target has been cut tells you more than the level of the target.