Twenty Minutes to the Bell, Won Slippage Pulls KOSPI Back

Right now KOSPI sits at 6,714.62, basically flat at -0.05%, while KOSDAQ is holding a +0.73% gain at 821.92. With twenty minutes left before the close, KOSPI has slipped 0.83 percentage points from where it stood at the 1:40pm brief, and KOSDAQ has cooled by 0.42 points over the same stretch. Whatever strength the morning built up, the afternoon gave a good chunk of it back.

The won is at the center of that pullback. USD/KRW jumped to 1,363.57 (+1.33%) and the dollar index climbed right along with it to 100.31, and a headline this afternoon about the Bank of Korea possibly hiking rates again this year — as the US pivots toward tightening — added to the pressure. On the KOSPI, foreigners net-sold 1.6846 trillion won, weighing on the index, while institutions stepped in with 1.2371 trillion won of net buying to cushion the drop. Overnight on Wall Street it was a quiet session — S&P 500 -0.45%, Nasdaq -0.01% — but the weakness in copper/minerals and semiconductors from that session looks like it carried through into our afternoon.

For the twenty minutes left, I'm watching whether the won keeps climbing and whether KOSDAQ can hold onto the gain it's still nursing. My book still shows KT&G at -0.7%, Poongsan at +8.7%, HD Hyundai Electric at -9.9%, and Microsoft at +24.1% in unrealized terms — today's FX headlines are just something I'm watching for now, not something I'm acting on.