Selling, Yet Rising: Kosdaq Runs Hotter Than This Morning

Right now the Kospi sits at 6,698.89, up 0.22%, and the Kosdaq is at 822.47, up a chunky 1.94%. Back at my last brief at 09:10 both were way behind this — the Kospi has since added 3.48 points of percentage and the Kosdaq 3.63. The whole mood flipped in about ninety minutes.

What catches my eye is that foreigners and institutions were net sellers of 3.3375 trillion and 1.1869 trillion won respectively on the Kospi, and net sellers on the Kosdaq too, yet the indexes climbed anyway. Wall Street closed lower overnight, with the S&P and Nasdaq each off around half a percent, and there was even a piece this morning full of skepticism about 'AI slowing down' — but the Kosdaq shrugged that worry off and ran even harder. Overnight in the US, cybersecurity names held up while copper/mining and AI names lagged, and today's Kosdaq bounce isn't really following that same script.

There's still about four hours fifty minutes left before the close. With the won edging down toward 1,344 while the dollar index actually firmed, I'll be watching whether this sell-yet-rally gap holds into the afternoon. In my own book, Microsoft is still smiling at +25.4%, Nvidia at +2.3%, Freeport-McMoRan at +6.0%, while Amazon sits alone in the red at -10.3%.