For more than a year, the artificial intelligence boom has seemed almost unstoppable. Nvidia became the symbol of a new technological era, Microsoft and Amazon accelerated spending on AI infrastructure, and investors rushed into every company connected to chips, data centers, or advanced computing. Along the way, a familiar question refused to disappear: is this another transformational technological revolution, or is it the formation of a financial bubble waiting to burst?

The recent turbulence in South Korea's KOSPI index offers an intriguing perspective on that debate. At first glance, comparing KOSPI with the Nasdaq-100 appears counterintuitive. One represents the stock market of a single Asian economy, while the other tracks the largest non-financial companies in the United States. Their economic foundations, sector composition, and investor bases are clearly different. Yet beneath those differences lies a surprisingly similar pattern. Both indices have become heavily dependent on a small number of technology giants whose fortunes are closely tied to the global AI investment cycle.

Nasdaq-100 has become the world's primary AI benchmark. Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, and Broadcom collectively account for well over half of the index's market capitalization. Every major advance in artificial intelligence, cloud computing, or semiconductor technology is reflected almost immediately in Nasdaq's performance. Investors increasingly view the index not simply as a measure of American corporate health........

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