Many Street analysts consider the iShares South Korea ETF (EWY) as a proxy for the health of global technology, the semiconductor sector, the chip sector, and perhaps the retail electronics sector as well.
One look at my weekly chart of EWY shows that it has been in the grasp of a major correction or possibly even bear phase since its January all-time high at 79.07 into Tuesday’s low at 56.34, a near 30% decline. This decline has retraced two-thirds of of the entire prior advance from the August 2015 low at 42.94 to the January 2018 high at 79.07. One could think that the ugly EWY performance reflected deteriorating relations with North Korea, but, ironically, relations have not been so promising since 1950! (more…)