Kospi at 7,030: Catching Its Breath by Midday
Right now the Kospi sits at 7,030.08, up 0.17%, and the Kosdaq is at 839.10, up 0.57%. But that's a different story from the 10:40 briefing — compared to then, the Kospi's gain has shrunk by 1.02 percentage points and the Kosdaq's by 0.46 percentage points. The market rallied hard this morning and now, heading into lunch, it's catching its breath, and I'm just watching it happen.
The won gets stronger while institutions keep selling
Look at the flow numbers and the story starts to show itself.
| Market | Foreign | Institutional |
|---|---|---|
| Kospi | +KRW 47.9bn net buy | -KRW 129.5bn net sell |
| Kosdaq | -KRW 56.6bn net sell | -KRW 95.2bn net sell |
On the Kospi, foreigners bought while institutions sold, and the institutional side sold in bigger size, which seems to be what took the wind out of it. On the Kosdaq, foreigners and institutions were both selling at once, which pressed the gain down further. Layer on top of that the won trading at 1,373.68 per dollar, down 0.81%, plus a headline that the won-yen rate slipped more than 3 won into the 858 range — and the picture of a stronger won meeting split foreign flows across the two markets gets sharper.
Chips smiled overnight, and my own portfolio caught some of that warmth
Overnight in the US (close of 9/22), the S&P 500 finished flat at +0.00% while the Nasdaq added 0.45%, led by semiconductors and AI while energy and financials lagged — and that same warmth looks like it carried into the Kosdaq's +0.57% today. Looking at my own book: Microsoft is up 26.9%, NVIDIA up 6.6%, and Freeport-McMoRan up 7.6%, all three sitting in gains, while Amazon is the outlier at -9.7%. That's just where the unrealized P&L stands right now, not today's move, and I'm not saying anything here about what comes next for any of them.
With about 3 hours and 20 minutes left until the close, I'm watching whether the won keeps stretching past its -0.81% drop, whether that KRW 129.5bn in institutional selling on the Kospi keeps going through the afternoon, and whether the Nasdaq's chip strength keeps holding up the Kosdaq's +0.57%. With the market described as calm and rate-and-credit conditions as favorable, I'll just keep watching how these numbers get rewritten by the close.