Seoul: Stocks fall; won edges down

[SEOUL] South Korea's KOSPI stock index fell 1 per cent on Friday. The South Korean won ended slightly weaker, while bond yields rose. At 0632 GMT, the KOSPI was down 25.87 points, or 1.04 per cent, at 2,461.38. US-China trade tensions as well as worries over faster-than-expected rate hike from the Federal Reserve continued to weigh on investor sentiment.

Samsung Electronics, which resumed trading after a three-day halt due to stock split, closed 2.1 per cent lower. The benchmark stock index fell 1.2 per cent for the week, its biggest weekly percentage loss since late March.

The won was quoted at 1,077.2 per dollar on the onshore settlement platform, 0.08 per cent weaker than its previous close at 1,076.3. The local currency barely moved on a weekly basis.

In offshore trading, the won was quoted at 1,075.83 per US dollar, down 0.12 per cent from the previous day, while in one-year non-deliverable forwards it was being asked at 1,059.87 per dollar.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was down 0.51 per cent, after US stocks ended the previous session with mild losses.

The KOSPI is up around 0.8 per cent so far this year, and up by 0.09 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 599,881,000 shares and, of the total traded issues of 881, the number of advancing shares was 437.

Foreigners were net sellers of 67,557 million won worth of shares. The US dollar has risen 0.89 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 Feb 6, 2018.

In money and debt markets, June futures on three-year treasury bonds fell 0.08 points to 107.53. ** 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 2.281 per cent, higher than the previous day's 2.25 per cent. (Reporting by Dahee Kim; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu)

REUTERS