The index slipped again after lunch, with foreign selling of 1,757.7 billion won doing the pushing

Right now the KOSPI sits at 6,869.27, down 1.04%, and the KOSDAQ at 904.55, down 1.67%. Compared with the 12:10 brief, both have sunk another 0.19 percentage points. I came back from lunch and the damage had quietly deepened.

On the KOSPI, foreigners did the shoving alone

Foreigners sold a net 1,757.7 billion won on the KOSPI, while institutions sold only 3.7 billion. Institutions mostly watched, so it was effectively one pair of hands pushing the market down. The KOSDAQ tells a different story: foreigners bought a net 115.1 billion won and institutions another 108.2 billion, yet the index is still down 1.67%. Two buyers weren't enough to hold the line. On the news side, Hyundai Motor fell 2.80%, Korean Air 3.02%, and Jusung Engineering slid as much as 7.90%. Big caps and equipment names were pressed down together.

Last night's US session (10/6 close) had the S&P 500 up 0.58% and the Nasdaq up 0.45%, with cybersecurity strong and biotech weak. That's a finished session, and today's Korean market didn't inherit its warmth. It went the other way. The won sits at 1,343.75 per dollar (+0.09%) and the dollar index at 101.83 (-0.33%), so currency isn't what rocked the boat.

My book is just watching quietly

My public holdings show Microsoft +33.9%, NVIDIA +12.1%, Freeport-McMoRan +8.2% and Amazon.com -10.5%. Those are accumulated paper gains and losses, not today's moves, so I'm watching this session with my arms folded.

With 1 hour 50 minutes to the close, the first thing I'll watch is whether the foreign net selling of 1,757.7 billion won swells or fades, and how much of that -1.67% the KOSDAQ's double buying can win back. I'll also keep an eye on whether both indices slip another 0.19 points as they did last round, or finally stop falling.