Seoul: stocks, won gain; bond yields fall

[SEOUL] South Korea's KOSPI stock index and the won climbed on Wednesday despite the escalating trade tensions between the United States and other major economies, while bond yields fell.

The Chinese embassy in Washington on Tuesday issued a security advisory to Chinese nationals travelling to the US amid continuing trade tensions between the world's two biggest economies. The White House announced on Tuesday that Mr Trump will be telling Nato countries that the US cannot be the world's piggy bank during the summit scheduled next week.

At 0056 GMT, the KOSPI was up 6.80 points or 0.30 per cent at 2,279.56. South Korea's Internet content service company Naver, which operates the nation's top search engine, rose as much as 4.3 per cent to its highest level since April.

The won was quoted at 1,116.2 per dollar on the onshore settlement platform, 0.22 per cent firmer than its previous close at 1,118.7.

In offshore trading, the won was quoted at 1,114.9 per US dollar, down 0.08 per cent from the previous day, while in one-year non-deliverable forwards it was being asked at 1,097.9 per dollar.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was up 0.11 per cent, after US stocks ended the previous session with losses, weighed down by major technology stocks. Japanese stocks also weakened 0.65 per cent.

The KOSPI is down around 7.9 per cent so far this year, and down by 7.18 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 (S$1.52 trillion). The trading volume during the session on the KOSPI index was 101,210,000 shares, and of the total traded issues of 880, the number of advancing shares was 423.

Foreign investors were net buyers of 52,599 million won worth of shares.

The US dollar has risen 4.52 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 1,125.17 on June 27, 2018.

In money and debt markets, September futures on three-year treasury bonds rose 0.05 points to 108.06.

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 2.132 per cent, lower than the previous day's 2.14 per cent.

REUTERS