South Korea: Stocks, won decline as Treasuries extend losses

[SEOUL] South Korea's Kospi stock index fell for a fourth session on Wednesday as climbing US bond yields weighed on Asia markets while foreign investors offloaded local tech stocks. The Korean won fell while bond yields rose.

At 02:40 GMT, the KOSPI was down 24.98 points or 1.01 per cent at 2,439.16. Market heavyweight Samsung Electronics fell 1.74 per cent while LG Electronics was down 2.6 per cent.

The won was quoted at 1,078.7 per dollar on the onshore settlement platform , 0.18 per cent weaker than its previous close at 1,076.8.

In offshore trading, the won was quoted at 1,077.9 per US dollar, down 0.15 per cent from the previous day, while in one-year non-deliverable forwards it was being transacted at 1,061.05 per dollar.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was down 0.66 per cent, after US stocks ended the previous session with mild losses. Japanese stocks weakened 0.65 per cent.

The Kospi is down around 0.1 per cent so far this year, and up by 1.22 per cent in the past 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 (S$1.52 trillion).

The trading volume during the session on the Kospi index was 236,724,000 shares and, of the total traded issues of 876, the number of advancing shares was 265.

Foreigners were net sellers of 458,087 million won worth of shares.

The US dollar has risen 1.08 per cent against the won this year. The won's high for the year is 1,053.55 per 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 0.05 points to107.62.

The Korean 3-month Certificate of Deposit benchmark rate was quoted at 1.65 per cent compared with a previous close of 1.65 per cent, while the benchmark 3-year Korean treasury bond yielded 2.241 per cent, higher than the previous day's 2.23 per cent.

REUTERS