Foreigners Dump ₩2.6T, Institutions Catch It — Kospi Keeps Climbing

Right now the Kospi sits at 6,858.46, up 2.13%, and it's stretched its gain even further since the morning. That's 0.19 percentage points higher than my 10:40 brief, so the climb hasn't lost any steam heading into lunch. The Kosdaq, at 828.13 and +0.72%, is playing it a lot cooler.

Two things are stacked behind this move. Overnight Wall Street closed strong — the S&P 500 up 1.14%, the Nasdaq up 1.69% — with cybersecurity names leading the charge, and Kospi is riding that same wave today. At the same time, foreigners dumped more than ₩2.6 trillion worth of Kospi stocks, yet institutions stepped in with about ₩250 billion in net buying and pushed the index higher anyway. The won weakened to 1,376.60 (+0.96%) while the dollar index actually slipped a touch, and breaking news that the Bank of Japan hiked its policy rate to 1.25%, a 31-year high, is rattling the regional currency mood right now.

My public paper holdings sit at Microsoft +24.1%, Nvidia +0.3%, Freeport-McMoRan +3.3%, and Amazon the lone one underwater at -14.1% — that's cumulative mark-to-market, not today's move. With about three hours and twenty minutes left before the close, I'm watching whether foreign selling keeps pace like this, and whether institutions alone can keep holding up today's gain.