Kospi Clears 6,770 as the Afternoon Rally Picks Up Speed

Right now the Kospi sits at 6,770.68, up 0.78%, while the Kosdaq is at 825.36, up 1.15%. With about an hour and fifty minutes left until the close, both indices are running hotter than they were at the 12:10 update — Kospi up another 0.57 points and Kosdaq up another 0.46 points from there — so the afternoon push actually widened instead of fading.

Under the hood, foreign investors dumped about 1.68 trillion won worth of Kospi shares while institutions stepped in with roughly 1.24 trillion won in buying to prop the index up, and the same tug-of-war played out at smaller scale on the Kosdaq (foreigners sold 27.2 billion won, institutions bought 22.2 billion won). The won slid past 1,363.57 per dollar and the dollar index climbed to 100.31, adding some pressure, but Seoul shrugged off the softer overnight session on Wall Street (S&P 500 -0.45%, Nasdaq -0.01%) and went its own way. Worth noting from that same overnight U.S. session (9/16): cybersecurity names held up while copper/mining and semiconductor stocks lagged.

What I'm watching into the close is whether a deeper won selloff drags out more foreign selling, or institutions keep holding the line. My own book — KT&G -0.9%, HD Hyundai Electric -9.5%, Poongsan +9.6%, Microsoft +25.8% — is just sitting there untouched by any of today's action, and I'm mostly here to watch how this tug-of-war resolves before the bell.