South Korea: Stocks down, won edges lower against dollar

[SEOUL] South Korea's Kospi stock index weakened on Wednesday. The Korean won edged down on the local platform and bond yields fell.

At 01.09 GMT, the KOSPI was down 8.36 points or 0.33 per cent at 2,513.38.

The won was quoted at 1,063.6 per dollar on the onshore settlement platform , 0.08 per cent weaker than its previous close at 1,062.7.

In offshore trading, the won was quoted at 1,064.1 per dollar, down 0.01 per cent from the previous day, while in one-year non-deliverable forwards it fetched 1,054.55 per dollar.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was down 0.15 per cent, after US stocks lot ground overnight.

Japanese stocks weakened 0.58 per cent.

The Kospi is up around 2.2 per cent so far this year, and up by 1.83 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 112,849,000 shares, and of the total traded issues of 875, the number of advancing shares was 320.

Foreigners were net sellers of 35,877 million won worth of shares.

The US dollar has fallen 0.21 per cent against the won this year. The won's high for the year is 1,056.67 per dollar on January 14 2018 and low is 1,073.2 on January 11 2018.

In money and debt markets, March futures on three-year treasury bonds rose 0.05 point to 107.65.

The Korean 3-month Certificate of Deposit benchmark rate was quoted at 1.66 per cent, while the benchmark 3-year Korean treasury bond yielded 2.216 per cent, lower than the previous day's 2.23 per cent.

REUTERS