[Edaily Reporter kyoungeun kim ] SK hynix(000660)Once again, SK Hynix ( ) was traded at the daily price limit down at the opening price with extremely low trading volume on the pre-market session of the alternative exchange Nextrade (NXT).
Immediately after the pre-market session (8:00 a.m. to 8:50 a.m.) opened on the 6th, SK hynix traded at 1,168,000 won—a 29.97% drop from the previous trading day’s closing price (1,668,000 won)—based on 11 trades. Subsequently, the Volatility Interruption (VI) mechanism was triggered, switching the market to a single-price trading system for two minutes; after trading resumed, the stock immediately narrowed its decline to 3–4%.

This is not the first time SK hynix has hit the daily price limit down due to extremely low trading volume. Previously, on the 28th of last month, the stock also hit the daily price limit down immediately after the pre-market opened following a trade of just one share.
That incident sent shockwaves not only through the domestic stock market but also into overseas cryptocurrency derivatives markets. According to a report by Shinhan Investment Securities, at 8:00 a.m. on the 28th of last month, a single share of SK hynix was traded at the daily price limit of 1,272,000 won on the Nextrade pre-market. Although the stock price quickly rebounded to the 1.7 million won range, minimizing the impact on the spot market, the issue escalated when this price was directly reflected in the SK hynix perpetual futures product’s oracle (which provides the underlying asset price) on the overseas cryptocurrency derivatives exchange TradeXY.
As the oracle price plummeted by 17.9%, positions worth $57.4 million (approximately 82.6 billion won) were instantly forced liquidated on HyperLiquid, the exchange with the largest market share in the on-chain perpetual futures market. Bloomberg reported that the blockchain data platform Allium estimated that this liquidation resulted in actual losses of $17.4 million (approximately 25.1 billion won) for more than 900 users.
Park Seong-je, an analyst at Shinhan Investment Securities, explained the situation at the time, saying, “A single share traded in the pre- and after-market—where trading volume is typically low—was reflected in TradeXY’s derivatives prices, triggering a massive liquidation.”
TradeXY took steps to resolve the situation on the 29th of last month by announcing it would fully compensate for the liquidation losses, but made it clear that this compensation would be a one-time payment. Consequently, some in the domestic securities industry are pointing out that the market must prepare for the possibility that parties seeking to profit from the liquidation of perpetual futures may target the opening price in the domestic pre-market.
The pre-market operates on a match-to-order basis, where trades are executed immediately when buy and sell bids match. Immediately after the market opens, liquidity is insufficient, creating a structure where even a single-share trade can cause significant price movements. In fact, on the previous trading day, SamsungElectroMechanics and Alteogen Inc. opened at the daily price limit—up from the previous day’s closing price—based on just a single-share trade.
To reduce such abnormal trades, Nextrade plans to introduce a static VI starting on the 14th of next month. Under this system, if an order is received at a price deviating by 10% or more from the previous day’s closing price or reference price, the trade will not be executed immediately. Instead, the market will switch to a single-price trading session for two minutes to gather orders and calculate a balanced price before resuming trading.