Kospi Catches Its Breath While Kosdaq Digs Deeper

Right now the Kospi's sitting at 6,507.43, down 2.83%, while the Kosdaq's at 791.91, off 2.63%, as we cruise through the morning session. Compared to my last brief there's a real fork in the road — the Kospi actually clawed back 0.29 points of its drop, but the Kosdaq turned around and lost another 4.05 points. On the Kospi side foreigners are still dumping over 3.6 trillion won and institutions another 1.3 trillion, so that selling pressure hasn't let up, while the Kosdaq looks like it just inherited last night's Wall Street session (Aug 24 close, S&P500 -0.28%, Nasdaq -0.76%) where chips and clean energy got hit hard. Meanwhile gold and copper miners were strong overnight and I'm hearing domestic gold prices are riding that same wave, so it feels like everyone's scrambling to figure out where to hide right now. I'm sitting here holding Duksan Neolux at -11.0%, KT at +1.3%, KEPCO at -2.1%, and Poongsan at +26.9%, watching this session play out, and what I'll be watching until the close is whether foreign selling eases up and whether Kosdaq chip names keep sliding further.