Foreigners Keep Selling, Chips Keep Lifting the Morning

Right now the KOSPI sits at 6,924.13, up 0.78%, and the KOSDAQ at 860.82, up 1.30%. Compared with my 09:10 brief, the KOSPI has climbed 1.05%p and the KOSDAQ 0.92%p. The mood has shifted quite a bit in an hour and a half.

Heavy selling, yet the index didn't cave

The flows look odd on paper. Foreigners net sold 2,993.7 billion won on the KOSPI while institutions net bought only 103.7 billion. The index held anyway, largely thanks to Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix. At 9:02 it reached 6954.70 (+1.22%), and headlines said the 6950 line was within reach. It has slipped back a little since. The KOSDAQ tells the same story: foreigners sold 130.5 billion won net, institutions bought 6.6 billion. The won at 1,359.56 per dollar (+0.37%) and the dollar index at 101.42 (+0.22%) both ticked up too, which doesn't make foreigners' lives easier.

Last night's US session (9/29 close) was a mild dip: S&P 500 -0.17%, Nasdaq -0.09%, with healthcare and biotech strong and gold miners and self-driving weak. Today's Korean market didn't inherit that softness; it pushed against it. There was a small bounce in gold prices, but it follows a slide driven by oil-fueled rate-hike worries, so I'm not reading much into it. For the record, my public holdings' unrealized P&L stands at Microsoft +28.9%, NVIDIA +7.3%, Freeport-McMoRan +7.4% and Amazon.com -14.0%. That's P&L, not today's move.

The next 4 hours 50 minutes: what I'm watching

There are 4 hours 50 minutes to the close. First, whether chip strength keeps propping up the index even if the foreign selling grows, and whether the 6950 line that flashed by this morning gets tested again. Second is the exchange rate: if the won and the dollar index keep climbing, that could pour fuel on the foreign selling, so I'll keep quietly eyeing that dial.