According to BlockBeats, on July 14, Goldman Sachs' latest research report pointed out that the recent sharp fluctuations in global technology stocks are mainly due to the deleveraging of liquidity caused by high-leverage trading, rather than the deterioration of the semiconductor industry's fundamentals.

Goldman Sachs stated that South Korea's newly launched 2x leveraged ETFs amplified market volatility. Several leveraged ETFs tracking Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix previously experienced single-day drops exceeding 30%, forcing funds to sell underlying stocks to maintain leverage ratios, creating a liquidity crunch of "price decline – forced selling – further decline." Goldman Sachs estimates that approximately 62% of recent net selling by South Korean institutional investors came from the liquidation of such ETFs.

Meanwhile, Leuthold Group pointed out that the balance of margin trading and securities lending in the United States has increased by about 54% in the past 12 months, reaching a historical high. Leveraged funds are highly concentrated in the AI and semiconductor sectors, making the market structure more fragile.

However, Goldman Sachs believes that the semiconductor industry has not yet reached the peak of its cycle. The institution points out that Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix have not yet lowered their profit forecasts, and the tight supply situation may continue until the second half of 2028 due to the limited expansion of memory chip production capacity. This round of correction is more like a position adjustment than a reversal of the industry's fundamentals.

According to BlockBeats, the US will release its June CPI data at 8:30 PM Beijing time on July 14th. The market generally expects that, driven by falling gasoline prices, the overall CPI in June may decrease by 0.1% to 0.2% month-on-month, with the year-on-year growth rate expected to drop from 4.2% in May to 3.8%; the core CPI is expected to rise by approximately 0.2% month-on-month and fall back to approximately 2.8% year-on-year.

However, several Wall Street firms believe that the current cooling of inflation is largely due to lower energy prices and does not necessarily mean that inflationary pressures in the United States have subsided. The transmission of housing, auto insurance, travel services, and tariffs to commodity prices may still keep core inflation sticky.

Meanwhile, the bond market is further betting on a Federal Reserve rate hike. Interest rate options indicate that the implied probability of a 25 basis point rate hike by the Fed in July has risen from less than 10% to about 50%, and the two-year Treasury yield remains above 4.25%. Previously, Fed Governor Waller stated that if core inflation rises again, a rate hike should be considered in the near term.

Most institutions believe that even if the overall CPI declines due to the drag from energy prices, the performance of core CPI and its sub-item structure will remain key to determining whether US inflation has truly peaked and the Fed's subsequent policy path.

According to BlockBeats, on July 14th, gold prices fell approximately 25% from their year-to-date high, primarily due to high interest rates, a strong US dollar, and rising energy prices increasing holding costs, resulting in significant short-term pressure. However, many market participants believe that this correction has not changed the long-term investment logic for gold.

Sprott market strategist Paul Wong stated that the recent decline in gold prices was mainly due to a stronger dollar, rising expectations of a Federal Reserve rate hike, and concentrated liquidation by quantitative funds. He believes that the current decline in gold prices has significantly exceeded the actual increase in the dollar and short-term interest rates, indicating that the negative impact of high interest rates and a strong dollar has been largely priced in by the market.

Paul Wong points out that while a strong dollar in the short term often suppresses gold's performance, in the long run, the stronger the dollar, the greater the incentive for the world to seek alternative reserve assets, which in turn helps to enhance gold's strategic position as a neutral reserve asset. With expanding global fiscal deficits, central banks continuously increasing their gold holdings, and intensifying geopolitical fragmentation, gold is gradually evolving from a simple inflation hedge into a currency hedge, a reserve asset, and even a potential international financial collateral.

He believes that gold and the US dollar may strengthen in tandem in the long term due to different underlying logics: the US dollar benefits from its core position in the global financing system, while gold benefits from the trend of global reserve asset diversification; however, at the cyclical level, gold prices still tend to maintain a negative correlation with the US dollar index.

According to BlockBeats, on July 14th, Hyperinsight monitoring showed that in the past 24 hours, the total trading volume of SK Hynix-related contracts across the entire cryptocurrency market was approximately $8.804 billion. Of this, the Korean stock contract SKHX traded approximately $7.439 billion, and the US stock ADR contract SKHY traded approximately $1.365 billion; the combined open interest of both was approximately $1.528 billion.

Compared to traditional markets, SK Hynix's Korean stock traded 16.8043 million shares today, with a turnover of approximately 30.5305 trillion won; converted at an exchange rate of 1,493.5 won to the US dollar, this is equivalent to approximately US$20.442 billion.

On July 13, the previous full trading day, Nasdaq SKHY traded 57.2843 million ADRs, roughly equivalent to $8.727 billion based on the closing price of $152.35.

Based on this estimate, the $8.804 billion trading volume in the cryptocurrency market is approximately 30.2% of the combined $29.17 billion trading volume of stocks in South Korea and the United States. Looking at individual markets, the trading volume of SKHX cryptocurrency contracts is approximately 36.4% of that of South Korean stocks; the trading volume of SKHY cryptocurrency contracts is approximately 15.6% of that of Nasdaq ADRs.

According to Hyperliquid data, SKHX and SKHY saw a combined trading volume of approximately $1.84 billion in the past 24 hours, accounting for about 20.9% of the total trading volume across the entire cryptocurrency market. Currently, SKHX is trading at $1,279.60 and SKHY at $161.84. Based on a conversion of 10 ADRs to 1 Korean Stock, SKHY is trading at a premium of approximately 26.48% over SKHX.

Note: Crypto market turnover uses the notional basis of leveraged contracts; Korean stock data corresponds to the full trading day of July 14, and Nasdaq data corresponds to the full trading day of July 13. Korean stock USD turnover, US stock ADR turnover, percentage, and premium are all calculated twice.