South Korea: Stocks tumble on foreign selling, Samsung Electronic losses; won ticks down

[SEOUL] South Korea's Kospi stock index slipped on Friday. The Korean won edged down in the local platform while bond yields rose.

At 01:08 GMT, the Kospi was down 23.25 points, or 0.91 per cent, at 2,545.29. The benchmark index tumbled on heavy foreign selling while a more than 3 per cent slide in market heavyweight Samsung Electronics shares gave additional pressure.

The won was quoted at 1,072.8 per dollar on the onshore settlement platform , 0.08 per cent weaker than its previous close at 1,071.9.

In offshore trading, the won was quoted at 1,073 per US dollar, down 0.29 per cent from the previous day, while in one-year non-deliverable forwards it was traded at 1,062.5 per dollar.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was down 0.15 per cent, after US stocks ended the previous session mostly lower. Japanese stocks weakened 1.02 per cent.

The KOSPI is up around 4.1 per cent so far this year, and up 3.49 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 158,485,000 shares, and of the total traded issues of 880, the number of advancing shares was 256.

Foreigners were net sellers of 121,706 million won worth of shares.

The US dollar has risen 0.62 per cent against the won this year. The won's high for the year is 1,056.67 per dollar on January 14 2018 and low is 1,077.2 on January 23 2018.

In money and debt markets, March futures on three-year treasury bonds fell 0.11 points to 107.41.

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 2.291 per cent, higher than the previous day's 2.25 per cent.

REUTERS