The fallout from a renewed military conflict between the United States and Iran sent New York stocks tumbling and hammered the South Korean stock market. The KOSPI opened down more than 3% on the 2nd, sliding to the low 6,600 range, while the KOSDAQ briefly surrendered the 800 level during the session as investor sentiment deteriorated sharply.<\/p>\n
According to the Korea Exchange, the KOSPI opened at 6,625.47, down 210.33 points (3.08%) from the previous trading day. After slipping to the low 6,600 range immediately after the open, the index pared some losses but remained weak at 6,678.01 as of 9:23 a.m., down 157.79 points (2.31%).<\/p>\n
The overnight weakness in the U.S. stock market underpinned the decline. On the 1st (local time), the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 52,766.88 on the New York Stock Exchange, down 419.02 points (0.79%) from the prior session. The S&P 500 fell 54.67 points (0.71%) to 7,631.47, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite dropped 271.12 points (1.03%) to 26,099.77.<\/p>\n
Surging international oil prices and inflation concerns stemming from the renewed U.S.-Iran hostilities weighed on investor sentiment. U.S. forces struck missile launch sites belonging to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on Larak Island in the Strait of Hormuz the previous day, and the IRGC announced it had attacked air bases in Jordan, escalating geopolitical tensions once again.<\/p>\n
On the supply-demand front, simultaneous selling by foreign and institutional investors dragged the index lower. On the main KOSPI board, foreign investors net sold 270.7 billion won (approximately $197.4 million) and institutional investors net sold 285.6 billion won (approximately $208.3 million). Retail investors absorbed the selling pressure with net purchases of 466.8 billion won (approximately $340.5 million), but it was not enough to defend the index. Program trading also showed a net sell bias of 254.8 billion won (approximately $185.8 million), comprising 21.2 billion won (approximately $15.5 million) in arbitrage trades and 233.6 billion won (approximately $170.4 million) in non-arbitrage trades.<\/p>\n
Most large-cap stocks could not escape the weakness. Samsung Electronics traded at 253,500 won (approximately $180), down 2.87% from the previous session, while SK Hynix fell 2.42% to 1.652 million won (approximately $1,200). SK Square plunged 4.40% and Hyundai Motor dropped 4.00%, while LG Energy Solution (-1.50%) and Samsung Biologics (-1.32%) also declined. KB Financial bucked the trend, edging up 0.12%.<\/p>\n
By sector, construction (-3.81%), transportation equipment and parts (-3.46%), securities (-2.82%), and electricity and gas (-2.38%) posted declines of 2\u20133%. Real estate (0.41%) was the only sector to gain ground. On the main board, only 144 stocks advanced while 717 declined, with losers overwhelmingly outnumbering gainers.<\/p>\n
The KOSDAQ also could not avoid the weakness. The KOSDAQ index opened at 802.80, down 18.45 points (2.25%) from the previous session, before sliding to 796.34 in early trading and surrendering the 800 level. It later pared some losses to trade at 813.14 as of 9:23 a.m., down 8.11 points (0.99%).<\/p>\n
On the KOSDAQ market, retail and foreign investors net bought 12.1 billion won (approximately $8.8 million) and 22.1 billion won (approximately $16.1 million), respectively, while institutional investors net sold 34.2 billion won (approximately $24.9 million). Among large-cap KOSDAQ stocks, HLB (-2.35%), EcoPro (-2.29%), Leeno Industrial (-2.14%), and Rainbow Robotics (-1.89%) declined. In contrast, Simmtech (0.80%), EO Technics (0.76%), Jusung Engineering (0.75%), and Wonik IPS (0.45%) advanced. On the KOSDAQ market, 343 stocks rose while 1,260 fell.<\/p>\n
Han Ji-young, an analyst at Kiwoom Securities, said, “The South Korean stock market opened lower today due to upward pressure on oil prices and interest rates, as well as weakness of over 3% in KOSPI 200 night futures.” He added, “We expect the market to pare losses during the session as it responds to catalysts such as bargain-hunting inflows and Dell’s after-hours stock surge of over 6% following an earnings surprise driven by strong AI server sales.”<\/p>\n
In the Seoul foreign exchange market, the won started the day’s trading at 1,373.8 per dollar, up 1.2 won from the previous session. The weakening won is also amplifying selling pressure from foreign investors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The fallout from a renewed military conflict between the United States and Iran sent New York stocks tumbling…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140828,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[457],"tags":[896,15215,45874,114,987,337,336,335,864,989,276,275,54691],"class_list":["post-140827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-korea-exchange","tag-foreign-investors","tag-institutional-investors","tag-international-oil-prices","tag-iran","tag-kiwoom-securities","tag-korea-exchange","tag-kosdaq","tag-kospi","tag-krx","tag-retail-investors","tag-samsung-electronics","tag-sk-hynix","tag-u-s-stock-market"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}