Kosdaq falls 4% on Monday
The slide follows a week in which the Kospi had already dropped for three straight sessions on heavy institutional selling.
Published
South Korea's Kosdaq index fell 4% on Monday, a sharp move for a market that has mostly traded on investment-deal headlines and periodic North Korean missile tests without major equity disruption.
The drop follows a rocky stretch for Korean stocks. The Kospi fell for a third straight session last week as foreign and institutional investors kept selling large-cap shares, pushing the index into the 6,600 range, according to The Asia Business Daily. Over that week the Kospi lost 5.39% and the Kosdaq slipped 0.11%, the paper reported. Earlier, on October 8, the Kospi had fallen 2.62% to 6,625.93 while the Kosdaq fell 0.69% to 892.27, according to SBS News.
The Kosdaq had actually been outperforming this month. As of Monday morning in Seoul, before the latest slide, the index was up 4.24% for October, lifted by chip materials and equipment stocks, while the Kospi was down 3.1% for the same period, according to Seoul Economic Daily.
Monday's 4% fall comes despite steadier macro signals: South Korea's current account surplus widened to $46.11 billion in August and inflation eased to 2.9% in September. The scale of the selloff suggests investor concern has moved beyond the recurring friction with Pyongyang into broader risk appetite for Korean equities, a shift worth watching for signs it spreads into other Asian markets.