Rally cools a notch, but Kospi keeps climbing past 7,100 on chip tailwind

Right now Kospi sits at 7,114.78, up 1.53%, and Kosdaq is at 842.67, up 0.77%. But compared to the 9:10am brief, Kospi has trimmed its gain by 0.12 points and Kosdaq by 0.34 points, so the morning's early fire has cooled off a touch as we roll through the session.

Behind that sits a split in who's buying. On Kospi, institutions are pouring in 1.519 trillion won and foreigners are chipping in a modest 7.1 billion won net buy, while on Kosdaq both foreigners and institutions have flipped to net selling. Wall Street's overnight session, S&P500 +1.49% and Nasdaq +2.26% on chip and AI strength, seems to be the wind Kospi is riding today, and brokerage stocks answered with their own early rally. Meanwhile the won keeps sliding the other way, at 1,384.86 per dollar, up 0.39%.

There's still 4 hours 50 minutes left before the close. What I'm watching is whether Kospi's gain keeps shrinking at this pace and whether Kosdaq's foreign/institutional selling hardens. On my own book, I'm just quietly checking the marks: Microsoft +24.9%, NVIDIA +4.2%, Freeport-McMoRan +6.7%, and Poongsan +11.0%.