Goldman Sachs raises KOSPI target to 7,000 on earnings surge

Goldman Sachs is telling clients that Korea still has room to run, even after a violent swing in the market. The firm lifted its year-end 2026 KOSPI target to 7,000 from 6,400 and raised its 2026 earnings growth forecast to 130% from 120%, saying it was the third time it had increased the estimate this year.

The call matters because Goldman is not treating the rally as a simple multiple-expansion story. Its research said the KOSPI closed at 5,583 on March 12, and that the move had been driven by a once-in-a-generation surge in semiconductor earnings. Goldman also said the market had fallen as much as 20% from its February 26 closing high after the Iran war began, including a 12% drop on March 4, before arguing that the pullback looked more like a correction than an end to the trade.

For Timothy Moe, Goldman Sachs Research’s chief Asia Pacific regional equity strategist, Korea remains central to the firm’s regional view. “Korea is our highest-conviction view in Asia,” Moe said, underscoring how much of Goldman’s Asia equity positioning now runs through Seoul rather than through a generic risk-on call.

That has immediate implications for Goldman’s sales, research and banking teams. A higher KOSPI target gives institutional sales a cleaner narrative for hedge funds and long-only clients, while research can lean harder on earnings revisions instead of broad macro hopes. For bankers pitching semiconductor, capital markets or cross-border mandates, the message is that Korea’s appeal is being rewritten by AI-related hardware demand and by the earnings power of chip leaders such as Samsung Electronics and SK hynix.

The policy backdrop has also helped the story. The Bank of Korea left its base rate unchanged at 2.50% on April 10, 2026, but upgraded its 2026 growth forecast to 2.0% from 1.8% on February 26, citing stronger demand for semiconductors and AI technology. That gives Goldman’s strategists another piece of support for a market call that rests on profit momentum rather than a hope that policy will do the heavy lifting.

The trade is not clean. Foreign investors dumped $13.2 billion worth of South Korean equities in one recent week, a reminder that the market can still whipsaw even as foreign ownership stood at 39.43% in the KOSPI as of May 21, 2026. For Goldman staff, that is exactly the kind of setup that tends to generate more client calls, more trading interest and more pressure to stay ahead of the next revision cycle.