SEOUL: Round-up of South Korean financial markets: South Korea’s KOSPI stock index weakened on Thursday. The Korean won hovered around 2-1/2-year highs on the local platform while bond yields fell.
At 07:32 GMT, the KOSPI was down 3.36 points or 0.13 percent at 2,537.15.
The won was quoted at 1,085.4 per dollar on the onshore settlement platform, 0.34 percent firmer than its previous close at 1,089.1. The currency extended gains to the highest since mid-May of 2015, despite a warning by a senior foreign exchange official to speculators earlier in the day.
In offshore trading, the won was quoted at 1,085.94 per US dollar, down 0.08 percent from the previous day, while in one-year non-deliverable forwards it was being transacted at 1,083.7 per dollar.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was down 0.25 percent, after Wall Street finished mostly soft in the previous session. Japanese stocks rose 0.48 percent.
The KOSPI is up around 25.4 percent so far this year, and 3.35 percent higher in the previous 30 days.
The current price-to-earnings ratio is 12.10, the dividend yield is 1.28 percent and the market capitalisation is 1,242.04 trillion won.
The trading volume during the session on the KOSPI index was 375,211,000 shares, and of the total traded issues of 872, the number of advancing shares was 499.
Foreigners were net sellers of 76,232 million won worth of shares.
The U.S dollar has fallen 9.97 percent against the won this year. The won’s high for the year is 1,085.24 per dollar on November 23 2017 and low is 1,211.8 on January 3 2017.
In money and debt markets, December futures on three-year treasury bonds rose 0.11 points to 108.05.
The Korean 3-month Certificate of Deposit benchmark rate was quoted at 1.49 percent compared with a previous close of 1.48 percent, while the benchmark 3-year Korean treasury bond yielded 2.132 percent versus the previous day’s 2.17 percent.
Source: Brecorder.com
