Afternoon Pullback Deepens as 5% Treasury Yields Rattle the Market

Right now KOSPI is sitting at 6,648.12, down 0.54%, while KOSDAQ is up 1.25% at 816.86 as we head into the back half of the session. But compared to my 12:10 update, KOSPI has actually slipped another 0.95 percentage points and KOSDAQ's gain has shrunk by 0.50 points. In the space of an hour and a half, the whole market quietly lost some steam.

If I had to point to why, the selling by both foreigners and institutions on KOSPI — over 3.3 trillion won and 1.1 trillion won respectively — jumps out first. News that the US 10-year Treasury yield briefly broke above 5% overnight seems to have put a rate-related weight on things, and Wall Street itself closed weak the day before (9/14), with the S&P 500 down 0.48% and the Nasdaq down 0.56%. Cybersecurity names held up in that session while copper/mining and AI names lagged, and today's soft patch here reads like an extension of that. The won actually ticked stronger against the dollar, at 1,344.64 (-0.26%), but that wasn't enough to flip the index's direction.

With about an hour and fifty minutes left, the thing I'm watching is whether that foreign and institutional selling keeps up through the close. With talk going around that real-economy indicators are losing momentum, whether this rate pressure builds or eases looks like it'll decide the gap between KOSPI and KOSDAQ today. My own holdings — KT&G -1.8%, Poongsan +6.6%, HD Hyundai Electric -10.6%, Samsung Electronics -1.5% — I'm just holding as is, separate from today's swings.