Asian market slide ends holiday cheer
Last week’s fallout from the U.S. stock market plunge proved long-lived when East Asian stock markets, including those in Korea, reopened yesterday after the Lunar New Year holiday.Many East Asian markets headed lower, with Korea’s benchmark stock market Kospi shedding 55.90 points, or 3.3 percent, to 1,640.67 points, compared to Feb. 5, the last day of trading before the holiday.
It was the 15th largest one-day point decline ever for the index and the third largest for this year alone.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index closed its first post-holiday trading day down 723.5 points, or 3.1 percent, while Singapore’s Strait Times Index dropped 63.68 points, or 2.2 percent. Stock markets in China, Taiwan and Vietnam were still closed yesterday.
The U.S. Dow Jones industrial average lost 3.6 percent from Feb. 5 to Feb. 8 on concerns about a weakening economy. Last week, it shed a total of 4.4 percent, its worst week in nearly five years.
“The sharp decline in the U.S. stock market caused in part by worse-than-expected business reports from U.S. companies last week dragged the Asian markets, including the Kospi, lower,” said Cho Jae-hoon, an analyst at Daewoo Securities.
The value of shares sold by foreign shareholders was 499.2 billion won ($528.1 million) more than the shares they bought. Individual investors bought 294.1 billion won more than they sold, and institutional investors net bought 72.9 billion won.
Foreign shareholders’ net sales also pulled down the local currency yesterday by 3.6 won to 945.3 per dollar. The won gets weaker when foreign shareholders convert proceeds to dollars.
Most Kospi shares fell yesterday. Samsung Electronics shed 4.7 percent to 584,000 won while top lender Kookmin Bank declined 6.5 percent.
The secondary Kosdaq dropped 12.41 points, or 1.9 percent, to close at 629.94.
By Moon Gwang-lip Staff Reporter [joe@joongang.co.kr]
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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