Seoul: Stocks firm on local institutions' purchases; won rises

[SEOUL] South Korea's Kospi stock index and won edged higher on Monday, while bond yields also rose.

At 01.18 GMT, the Kospi was up 9.78 points or 0.40 per cent at 2,439.36. The benchmark index fell early in the session as Wall Street slumped on Friday on heightened fears of a US-China trade war, but recovered on stock purchases by local institutions and individual investors.

The won was quoted at 1,067.8 per US dollar on the onshore settlement platform , 0.17 per cent firmer than its previous close at 1,069.6.

In offshore trading, the won was quoted at 1,067.9 per US dollar, up 0.17 per cent from the previous day, while in one-year non-deliverable forwards it fetched 1,053.25 per US dollar.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was up 0.18 per cent, after US stocks ended the previous session in losses. Japanese stocks rose 0.14 per cent.

The Kospi is down about 1.5 per cent so far this year, and up 0.63 per cent in the previous 30 days.

The current price-to-earnings ratio is 12.10, the dividend yield is 1.28 per cent and the market capitalisation is 1,242.04 trillion won.

The trading volume during the session on the Kospi index was 124,120,000 shares, and of the total traded issues of 882, the number of advancing shares was 304.

Foreigners were net sellers of 15,061 million won worth of shares.

The US dollar has risen 0.14 per cent against the won this year. The won's high for the year is 1,053.55 per US dollar on April 2 2018 and low is 1,098.4 on February 6 2018.

In money and debt markets, June futures on three-year treasury bonds fell 0.03 points to 107.87.

The Korean three-month Certificate of Deposit benchmark rate was quoted at 1.65 per cent, while the benchmark three-year Korean treasury bond yielded 2.184 per cent, higher than the previous day's 2.16 per cent.

REUTERS