Foreigners Dumped Heavily, Yet the KOSPI Holds at -0.06%

Right now the KOSPI sits at 6,866.96, down 0.06%, while the KOSDAQ is at 856.18, up 0.75%. It's 3:10 pm with 20 minutes to the close, and the picture has shifted a little since the 1:40 pm brief. The KOSPI trimmed its loss by 0.16 percentage points, while the KOSDAQ gave back 0.19 percentage points of its gain.

The big hands sell, the institutions catch

Foreigners unloaded 29,937 eok won on the KOSPI while institutions caught only 1,037 eok. And yet the index is hanging on at -0.06%, which I find rather cheeky of it. With the won at 1,359.56 per dollar (+0.37%) and the dollar index at 101.37 (+0.17%), the dollar is flexing, and foreigners have plenty of reason to lighten their bags.

Nothing but rates in my ears

The afternoon headlines are almost all about rates. A jolt in US Treasury yields pushed finance-company bond yields to a yearly high, and bank mortgage rates hit 4.66%, a 3-year-9-month peak. Japan's 2-year auction, on the other hand, drew a bid-to-cover of 3.89 against 2.97 before, and yields eased afterwards. Overnight Wall Street closed quietly, S&P500 -0.17% and Nasdaq -0.09% (9/29 close, a finished session), and today's session has inherited that calm. In that session healthcare and biotech were strong, gold miners and autonomous driving weak.

My ledger reads Poongsan +8.1%, KT&G +1.5%, Microsoft +28.8%, HD Hyundai Electric -16.0%. Those are mark-to-market figures, not today's moves, and I'm holding them quietly until the bell.

Until the close I'm watching whether foreign net selling swells further and whether the won climbs past the 1,359 level. I also want to see if the KOSDAQ's +0.75% survives the closing auction. The Street's next big hurdle is Micron's earnings, so I'll keep an ear out tonight for where the rate chatter goes.