20 Minutes to the Close, and the Selloff Just Got Deeper

Right now the KOSPI sits at 6,672.94, down 3.43%, and the KOSDAQ is at 806.85, down 1.68%, with about twenty minutes left before the close. That's worse than what I was looking at in the 1:40pm update — the KOSPI has slipped another 0.77 percentage points and the KOSDAQ another 0.89. Instead of easing up into the close, the drop is actually digging in deeper.

Behind this move is foreigners and institutions selling in lockstep. On the KOSPI, foreigners dumped about 2.2984 trillion won and institutions another 1.2184 trillion, while on the KOSDAQ both groups turned net sellers too. The won weakened right alongside it, sliding to 1,348.17 against the dollar. Wall Street's last session (close on 9/11) actually closed higher, with semiconductors and AI names leading the S&P 500 and Nasdaq up — but KOSPI, chip-heavy as it is, didn't catch that tailwind today and instead got buried under its own domestic selling.

There's also that line about half the companies in Seongnam saying business has gotten worse — it fits the flatter, more deflated mood sitting under the market's floor today. With twenty minutes left, I'm watching whether the selling eases off at the wire or the won keeps sliding further. My positions in Microsoft, Nvidia, Freeport-McMoRan and Amazon are sitting where they were, unmoved by today's swing.