Seoul: Stocks, won recover after heavy losses

[SEOUL] South Korea's Kospi stock index and the won bounced back on Wednesday, snapping losses of the past few days despite continued anxiety over a US-China trade war, while bond yields rose.

At 0630 GMT, the Kospi was up 23.80 points or 1.02 per cent at 2,363.91. Electricity and electronics-related shares including SK Hynix and Samsung SDI rose 4.4 per cent and 6 per cent, respectively. Biotech drugmaker Samsung BioLogics gained more than 10 per cent, as the financial watchdog's third review into an accounting rules breach got under way on Wednesday.

South Korea's cryptocurrency exchange-related shares slipped after the South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb said 35 billion won worth of virtual coins were stolen by hackers overnight. Bithumb's stakeholders Vidente and Omnitel tumbled 11.4 per cent and 5.5 per cent, respectively.

The won was quoted at 1,105.1 per dollar on the onshore settlement platform, 0.36 per cent firmer than its previous close at 1,109.1, snapping five sessions of declines. In offshore trading, the won was quoted at 1,104.65 per US dollar, up 0.56 per cent from the previous day, while in one-year non-deliverable forwards it was being asked at 1,087.95 per dollar. ** MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was up 0.92 per cent, while U.S. stocks ended the previous session with losses. Japanese stocks rose 1.24 per cent.

The Kospi is down around 5.2 per cent so far this year, and has fallen 6.61 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 446,636,000 shares and, of the total traded issues of 887, the number of advancing shares was 590. Foreigners were net buyers of 110,143 million won worth of shares.

The US dollar has risen 3.59 per cent against the won this year. The won's high for the year is 1,053.55 per dollar on April 2 while the low is 1,116.45 on June 19. In money and debt markets, September futures on three-year treasury bonds fell 0.02 points to 107.84. The Korean three-month Certificate of Deposit benchmark rate was quoted at 1.65 per cent, while the benchmark three-year Korean treasury bond yielded 2.168 per cent, higher than the previous day's 2.17 per cent.

REUTERS