A one-day bounce, and a Kosdaq sidecar by 1:40 pm

Right now the KOSPI sits at 5,757.75, up 3.66%, and the KOSDAQ at 799.34, up 5.06%. Against my 12:10 note, the KOSPI is another 0.60 percentage points higher and the KOSDAQ 0.89 points higher. Over lunch, the slope added one more step.

After the sidecar, the table tilted

What changed is the foreign money. On the KOSPI foreigners are still net sellers by 562억 won, but 2,022억 won of net buying has been added since my last note, so the selling hand has clearly softened. On the KOSDAQ foreigners are net sellers by 1,023억 won, yet institutions propped it up with 1,346억 won of net buying, and foreign net buying there also grew by 67억 won. The headlines fit: dip-buying in chips pushed the KOSPI back above 5,700, and a buy-side sidecar was triggered on the KOSDAQ. I read this as a rebound one day after a sharp drop.

Last night's US session (10/15 close) was quiet, with the S&P 500 up 0.33% and the Nasdaq up 0.08%, while AI and chips were weak. Korea did not inherit that weakness. It went against it, with semiconductors leading the bounce. But a headline landed in the same window saying foreigners pulled 27 trillion won out of Korean equities in September, the eighth straight month of net outflows. A heavy bag still sits by the side of the road up.

My public holdings show Coca-Cola +5.5%, Procter & Gamble +5.4%, PepsiCo -2.4% and KB Financial -8.5% in unrealized P&L. Those are accumulated numbers, separate from today's rally.

With 1 hour 50 minutes to the close, I'm watching two things: whether the KOSPI foreign net selling of 562억 won flips to net buying, and whether institutional buying on the KOSDAQ keeps going after the sidecar. That will tell me whether this bounce is hardening into real buying or is just one short-covering breath.