Kospi’s market cap climbs to 14th spot

Korea’s main bourse Kospi ranked 14th in the world in the first half, up a notch from the end of last year as market capitalization increased.

According to the nation’s sole stock market operator Korea Exchange on Monday, the market capitalization of the Seoul benchmark Kospi stood at $1.26 trillion won ($1.1 billion), up 2.3 percent from the end of last year. The Kospi ranked 15th on the global market at the end of 2015.

“The Korean main stock exchange has done relatively well in the first half despite numerous unfavorable factors,” said a KRX official.

In fact, KRX said that in the first half of the year global market capitalization shrank from $67.1 trillion to $66.3 trillion during the same period.

By region, the Americas’ stock market grew the sharpest.

The Americas grew 4.3 percent by market capitalization in the first half. The increase in the Americas’ market capitalization was largely due to the market capitalization increase of the New York Stock Exchange, which accounted for 77 percent of the $1.2 trillion increase in market capitalization in stock markets in Americas to $29.2 trillion during the first half. The NYSE grew 5.2 percent thanks to the improvement of the U.S. economy. Market capitalization for the NYSE, No. 1 in the world, amounted to $18.7 trillion. That was 28.2 percent of the world’s combined market capitalization. The U.S. secondary market Nasdaq was the second largest with $7 trillion. However, the secondary market saw its market capitalization, which accounted for 10.7 percent of the global market capitalization, fall nearly 3 percent in the first six months of the year.

Asia and Europe both struggled mostly because of the economic uncertainties in the Eurozone, including Brexit, and earlier concerns of an interest hike by the U.S. Federal Reserve.

Asian and Pacific markets’ combined market capitalization shrank 5.9 percent to $21.9 trillion while the combined market capitalization of Europe, Africa and the Middle East dropped 4.5 percent to $15.2 trillion. Many of the Asian markets struggled as well. While India’s stock exchange inched up a half-percent, Shanghai tumbled 17 percent, while China’s Shenzhen stock exchange retreated 12.3 percent. Hong Kong saw its market rate fall 6.7 percent and Japan’s declined 4.3 percent. In Europe, Germany’s Deutsche Boerse and U.K.’s London SE Group both fell more than 10 percent.

BY LEE HO-JEONG [lee.hojeong@joongang.co.kr]