Seoul may lose 8 trillion won over MSCI index changes

Argentina and Saudi Arabia’s entry into the emerging market indices of Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) could cause capital outflows of around 8 trillion won from the Korean bourse, experts said Thursday.

The U.S.-based index provider said Wednesday that it has decided to put Argentina back on its flagship emerging market indices after a ten-year absence, and to give the same status to Saudi Arabia for the first time. Both decisions will take effect starting mid-2019.

“As the MSCI Saudi Arabia Index will have a weighting of around 2.6 percent in the emerging markets index, that of South Korea will decrease by 0.4 percentage points to 14.96 percent,” said Ko Seung-hee, an expert at Mirae Asset Daewoo.

“That means up to 8.36 trillion won would come out of the local stock market starting next year,” the analyst added.

Ha In-hwan, an expert at SK Securities, said foreign investors would take around 7.9 trillion won out of the local stock market in favor of new destinations.

“Saudi Arabia’s inclusion would lead to 6.6 trillion won of capital outflows, and 1.3 trillion won due to Argentina’s entry. This could have a greater impact on the local market than in the case of China (which joined the emerging markets index in June),” Ha noted.

Major blue chips in Seoul will suffer losses. Tech giant Samsung Electronics could lose 1.93 trillion won, major chipmaker SK Hynix could see a 380 billion won outflow and bio giant Celltrion could give up 240 billion won, according to the analyst.

Yonhap