Down 9% After the Circuit Breaker, and I'm Catching My Breath With 20 Minutes Left

Right now the KOSPI sits at 5,466.21, down 9.03%, and the KOSDAQ at 747.73, down 9.24%. Since the 13:40 brief the KOSPI has slipped another 1.43 points and the KOSDAQ another 1.66. On a board already deep in red, the hole kept widening over the last hour and a half.

A day when the circuit breakers fired back to back

At 15:08 the news hit that both markets triggered circuit breakers together, the first stage firing one after another as they fell more than 8%. Foreigners are the main driver. On the KOSPI they sold a net 1,179.1 billion won, and institutions caught 811.9 billion of it, but it wasn't enough. On the KOSDAQ foreigners sold 212.8 billion net and institutions sold 178.7 billion too, so nobody was holding the floor.

Did it follow last night's US session?

It didn't resist it; it amplified it. The US close on 10/14 was S&P500 -1.11% and Nasdaq -1.88%, with semiconductors and clean energy weak. Today's drop is far bigger than that. The won at 1,340.31 per dollar (+0.46%) added weight on the foreign selling side. The rates story presses down too: the COFIX, the benchmark for floating-rate mortgages, came in at 3.43%, up 25bp from the prior month.

On my disclosed holdings, the unrealized P&L reads Hyundai Rotem -18.8%, KB Financial -12.1%, Celltrion -1.8% and Coca-Cola +5.3%. That's mark-to-market, not today's move. Those numbers tell me where my book stands in this tape.

What I'm watching into the close

The last 20 minutes come down to whether the drop stalls in the -9% zone or widens. First, whether institutional net buying on the KOSPI grows beyond 811.9 billion, and whether foreign net selling of 1,179.1 billion eases before the bell. Second, the KOSDAQ, where even institutions have turned sellers, so how the closing auction absorbs supply is the question. For now I just write the numbers down as they are.