The Korea Exchange suspended programme sell orders on the main board at six minutes past nine on Wednesday morning, when the KOSPI's fall passed six per cent. The Hankook Ilbo, citing the exchange, called it the twenty-fifth sell-side sidecar of the year.
The index had opened down 4.96 per cent at 6,528.77 and kept going, touching 6,400.81 during the morning. By half past one in the afternoon it was 5.71 per cent lower at 6,477.25.
The selling was concentrated in the two largest companies on the exchange. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix each fell more than seven and nine per cent respectively during the session. SK Square dropped 10.84 per cent and Samsung Life 9.98 per cent. Foreign investors sold a net 2.38 trillion won and institutions 1.34 trillion won, while individual investors bought 3.56 trillion won of what they were selling.
What every account points to is the same thing, and it is not in Korea. The yield on the thirty-year United States Treasury rose as far as 5.337 per cent during trading, its highest since 2007. New York had closed lower the night before — the Dow down 0.22 per cent, the S&P 500 down 0.69, the Nasdaq down 1.33 — and the memory chip makers there fell harder than the indices, with Micron off 7.02 per cent and SanDisk 9.01.
Beyond the yield itself the explanations differ by outlet. Financial News quoted market participants who put the global bond selling down to two things at once: worries about government finances, and a wave of corporate bond issuance from big technology firms raising money for AI chips and data centres, which they said gives investors a higher-yielding alternative to government paper. Newsis pointed instead to uncertainty out of the Middle East alongside the American rates. Brent settled at $91.02 a barrel and West Texas Intermediate at $84.94.
Why it is on the board
It came to us at 18th on the Newsis most-read list and 32nd on News1's — which is lower than a five per cent fall in the index would suggest, and worth noting rather than smoothing over. We collect three times a day and this one was caught at 17 minutes past two in the afternoon, Korean time, with the market still open and the story still climbing. What the lists rank is what had been read by then, not what the day turned out to be.
확인: 뉴시스 · 파이낸셜뉴스 · 한국일보