South Korea: stocks edge down, won steady

[SEOUL] South Korea's Kospi stock index weakened on Tuesday. The Korean won held steady on the local platform while bond yields rose.

At 01.06 GMT, the Kospi was down 2.11 points or 0.09 per cent at 2,479.77.

The won was quoted at 1,087.9 per dollar on the onshore settlement platform , 0.06 percent firmer than its previous close at 1,088.5.

In offshore trading, the won was quoted at 1,087.5 per US dollar, down 0.2 per cent from the previous day, while in one-year non-delierable forwards it fetched 1,080.31 per dollar.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was up 0.11 per cent, after a record session for US stocks overnight. Japanese stocks eased 0.01 per cent.

The Kospi is up around 22.5 percent so far this year, and down by 2.65 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 95,866,000 shares, and of the total traded issues of 876, the number of advancing shares was 197.

Foreigners were net buyers of 26,559 million won worth of shares.

The US dollar has fallen 9.84 per cent against the won this year. The won's high for the year is 1,075.71 per dollar on November 29 2017 and low is 1,211.8 on January 3 2017.

In money and debt markets, December futures on three-year treasury bonds fell 0.04 points to 108.24.

The Korean 3-month Certificate of Deposit benchmark rate was quoted at 1.66 per cent, unchanged from the previous close, while the benchmark 3-year Korean treasury bond yielded 2.099 per cent, higher than the previous day's 2.09 per cent.

REUTERS