Kospi Gives Back 7,000 and Digs the Hole Deeper on Oil and Rate Jitters

Right now the Kospi sits at 6,854.46, down 2.55%, and the Kosdaq's slipped to 821.16, off 1.88%. That's a lot heavier than my morning brief — the drop widened by 2.30 points on the Kospi and 2.67 points on the Kosdaq since then, so this tape's been losing steam all morning. The story behind it seems to be a jump in US oil and treasury yields, which apparently knocked the Kospi below 7,000 right from the open, and foreigners have been dumping about 2.62 trillion won worth of Kospi names to help drag it down. Wall Street's last close (9/10) had both the S&P and Nasdaq in the red too, with overnight strength limited to chips and clean energy while bio and materials lagged — so today's local session is basically carrying that same heavy mood forward. Into the close, I'll be watching whether the foreign selling eases up and whether the oil-and-rates pressure keeps piling on.