South Korea: Stocks at 10-week low as foreign selling hurts, won steady

[SEOUL] South Korea's Kospi stock index weakened on Thursday. The Korean won barely moved on the local platform while bond yields fell.

At 01.16 GMT, the Kospi was down 21.58 points or 0.87 per cent at 2,450.79, the lowest since mid-Oct. The benchmark index was largely pressured by foreign and institutional investors'selling after an uninspiring performance on Wall Street overnight.

The won was quoted at 1,080.5 per dollar on the onshore settlement platform , 0.04 percent firmer than its previous close at 1,080.9.

** In offshore trading, the won was quoted at 1,081.1 per US dollar, down 0.14 percent from the previous day, while in one-year non-deliverable forwards it fetched 1,072.6 per dollar.

** MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was down 0.15 percent, after U.S. stocks ended the previous session almost flat. . Japanese stocks weakened 0.45 per cent.

The Kospi is up around 22.0 per cent so far this year, and down by 3.14 per cent in the previous 30 days.

The current price-to-earnings ratio is 12.10, the dividend yield is 1.28 per Ccent and the market capitalisation is 1,242.04 trillion won.

The trading volume during the session on the Kospi index was 72,149,000 shares, and of the total traded issues of 869, the number of advancing shares was 268.

Foreigners were net sellers of 27,784 million won worth of shares.

The US dollar has fallen 10.38 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, March futures on three-year treasury bonds fell 0.05 points to108.04.

The Korean 3-month Certificate of Deposit benchmark rate was unmoved from the previous close of 1.66 per cent, while the benchmark 3-year Korean treasury bond yielded 2.094 per cent, lower than the previous day's 2.10 per cent.

REUTERS