South Korea: Stocks falter as trade worries hurt sentiment; won down

[SEOUL] South Korea's dock index slipped early on Friday due to worries of trade war, triggered by US tariffs. The Korean won lost ground while bond yields rose.

At 01:15 GMT, the Kospi was down 13.72 points, or 0.56 per cent, at 2,478.44.

The won was quoted at 1,070.6 per dollar on the onshore settlement platform , 0.49 per cent weaker than its previous close at 1,065.4. The currency was weighed by greenback's strength in the global markets.

In offshore trading, the won was quoted at 1,070.87 per US dollar, down 0.2 per cent from the previous day, while in one-year non-deliverable forwards it was being transacted at 1,059.15 per dollar.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was down 0.34 per cent, after US stocks ended Thursday with losses . Japanese stocks weakened 0.37 per cent.

The Kospi is up around 1.0 per cent so far this year, and up by 4.07 per cent in the previous 30 days.

The current price-to-earnings ratio is 12.10, 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 120,199,000 shares, and of the total traded issues of 879, the number of advancing shares was 327.

Foreigners were net sellers of 29,595 million won worth of shares.

The US dollar has risen 0.42 per cent against the won this year. The won's high for the year is 1,056.67 per dollar on Jan 14 and low is 1,098.4 on Feb 6.

In money and debt markets, March futures on three-year treasury bonds fell 0.04 points to 107.78.

The Korean 3-month Certificate of Deposit benchmark rate was quoted at 1.65 per cent, while the benchmark 3-year Korean treasury bond yielded 2.287 percent, higher than the previous day's 2.27 per cent.

REUTERS