South Korea: Stocks skid to 5-month low on global rout, won slides
[SEOUL] South Korea's Kospi stock index slid early Friday following fresh losses in Wall Street, which made investors turn away from riskier assets. The Korean won faltered, while bond yields rose.
At 00.59 GMT, the Kospi was down 46.32 points or 1.9 per cent at 2,361.30. The benchmark index fell more than 2.5 per cent at the opening, its lowest intraday level since early September.
The won was quoted at 1,094.2 per dollar on the onshore settlement platform, 0.6 per cent weaker than its previous close at 1,087.9.
In offshore trading, the won was quoted at 1,093.8 per US dollar, up 0.3 per cent from the previous day, while in one-year non-deliverable forwards it was being transacted at 1,083.5 per dollar.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was down 0.76 per cent, after U.S. stocks ended the previous session with mild losses. Japanese stocks weakened 2.76 per cent.
The Kospi is now down around 4 per cent in 2018, and has lost nearly 8 per cent in February alone.
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 125,107,000 shares, and of the total traded issues of 878, the number of advancing shares was 120.
Foreigners were net sellers of 64,605 million won worth of shares.
The US dollar has risen 2.57 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 1,098.4 on February 6 2018.
In money and debt markets, March futures on three-year treasury bonds rose 0.01 points to 107.59.
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 2.273 per cent, higher than the previous day's 2.27 per cent.
REUTERS
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