No bounce came: Kospi -3.33% with 20 minutes to the close
Kospi sits at 6,404.98, down 3.33%, and Kosdaq at 852.46, down 4.46%. With 20 minutes to the close I was hoping the hole would have shrunk a bit, but against the 13:40 brief the Kospi is another 0.39 points lower and the Kosdaq another 0.29 points. All afternoon there was no bounce, just the floor dropping one more step.
Foreigners and institutions did the dumping; only Kosdaq foreigners held a hand out
| Group | Kospi | Kosdaq |
|---|---|---|
| Foreigners | 20,767 억 net sold | 780 억 net bought |
| Institutions | 16,750 억 net sold | 1,075 억 net sold |
On the Kospi, foreigners sold 20,767억 and institutions 16,750억 at the same time, so the index had no way to hold. On the Kosdaq, foreigners propped it up with 780억 of net buying, but that wasn't enough against institutions' 1,075억 net selling. At 15:08 the flash headline read "Kospi at 6300 for the first time in two months," and news that leveraged ETF trading collapsed 92% tells me there are few hands left to catch things once the heat fades. BOK Governor Shin Hyun-song saying inflation's path matters most, and leaving room for another hike, weighed on the afternoon too. The won at 1,342.99 per dollar (+0.29%) is hardly welcome news for foreigners either.
Wall Street smiled last night; Seoul walked the other way
The last US session (10/9 close) ended with the S&P 500 +0.59% and the Nasdaq +0.64%, cybersecurity strong, aerospace and semiconductors weak. That session is already settled history. Seoul today refused to inherit its warmth and went the opposite way. The marks on my public holdings read Microsoft +35.4%, Freeport-McMoRan +9.9%, NVIDIA +7.5% and Amazon.com -8.3%, and I'm leaving those numbers as they are and watching.
Two things matter in the last 20 minutes: whether the Kospi's foreign net selling of 20,767억 swells further into the close, and whether the slide that's run since the last brief, the 0.39 points, stops here. Until the closing bell, those are the only two lines I'm watching.