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SK Hynix has overtaken Samsung Electronics in market capitalization for the first time in the history of the domestic stock market, claiming the No. 1 spot for the first time in 26 years — and the milestone is drawing renewed attention to a brokerage report that warned such a reversal would signal the end of the current bull market.
According to Korea Exchange, SK Hynix surpassed Samsung Electronics in market cap on Monday at 12:40 p.m., with its common shares reaching 2,090 trillion won against Samsung Electronics' 2,088 trillion won.
It marks the first time Samsung Electronics has ceded the top Kospi market-cap position since November 2000. At that time, Samsung Electronics briefly lost the top spot to SK Telecom before reclaiming it on Nov. 21 of the same year and holding it for more than 25 years.
With the market-cap reversal now a reality, a brokerage report published roughly a month ago — warning that the moment SK Hynix surpassed Samsung Electronics would signal the end of the bull market — is drawing wide attention again.
In a May 18 report, Lee Jae-man, a researcher at Hana Securities, said, "The signal for the end of the current bull market, which is grounded in rising corporate earnings, will be the moment SK Hynix's market cap surpasses that of Samsung Electronics."
Lee argued that the market-cap reversal between the two stocks is the key benchmark for judging whether the Kospi is overheating. "A change in the No. 1 market-cap position driven purely by share price overheating — without any reversal in earnings fundamentals — is both the peak of a bubble and a precursor to its collapse," he said.
The core message of the report was that if the market-cap ranking flips solely on the back of a sharp share price surge, with no change in the underlying earnings fundamentals of the two companies, investors should prepare for the end of the index rally.
Lee also cited Cisco Systems briefly becoming the largest company in the S&P 500 at the peak of the dot-com bubble in 2000.
In Cisco's case, he explained, expectations drove the share price higher ahead of actual earnings, pushing it to the top regardless of profit scale — after which the Nasdaq entered a sustained decline and the bubble collapsed.
The question now is whether the market-cap reversal between SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics should be read as a signal that the bull market is ending.
Views in the brokerage community are divided. Some analysts share Hana Securities' concern, viewing the excessive concentration of market cap in a single stock as a risk in itself. Others argue the shift reflects a fundamental revaluation of corporate worth as the semiconductor industry grows in the AI era.
SK Hynix posted operating profit of 37 trillion won in the first quarter of this year, demonstrating earnings-driven momentum. The company also held a 61 percent share of the HBM market in 2025, and analysts project it will maintain more than 50 percent by sales in 2026 — leading some to argue that a direct comparison with Cisco is an oversimplification.
Park Jun-young, a researcher at Hanwha Investment Securities, said SK Hynix "is not a company that shows extreme earnings volatility, but one capable of consistently generating high levels of profit," adding that it "has no reason to be undervalued without basis within the global tech sector."
yeonjoo7@heraldcorp.com
