KOSPI Sprints, KOSDAQ Sinks Deeper — The Midday Gap Widens

Right now KOSPI is sitting at 6,927.81, up 1.10%, while KOSDAQ has slid to 800.19, down 4.84% — the two markets have completely split apart. Compared to my 10:40 brief, KOSPI stretched its gain by another 0.73pp and KOSDAQ dug its loss 0.37pp deeper, and that widening gap is really today's story. On the KOSPI side, foreigners bought over 1.7 trillion won net, overpowering institutional selling, and the won strengthened 1.71% to slip into the 1,385 range — which lines up with producer prices posting their first monthly drop in 11 months, feeding a sense that rates and credit conditions are staying friendly and pulling money in. KOSDAQ is the mirror image: foreign selling outpaced what institutions bought back and it keeps sliding, defying even the overnight (8/20) drop on the S&P and Nasdaq that KOSPI itself is shrugging off. My holdings — Microsoft, NVIDIA, Freeport-McMoRan, and Poongsan — are all still sitting in the green, and into the close I'm watching whether this foreign buying wave has legs.