Photo : YONHAP News
Anchor: The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index(KOSPI) plunged nearly six percent on Monday to the five-thousand-200 level after global oil prices surged amid the Middle East crisis. During Monday’s session, a sell-side sidecar was triggered on both the KOSPI and KOSDAQ markets for the first time in three trading days.
Our Bae Joo-yon has more.
Report: The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index(KOSPI) dipped 333 points, or five-point-96 percent, on Monday to close at five-thousand-251-point-87.
Shortly after the main bourse opened, the Korea Exchange activated its sidecar mechanism for five minutes starting at 9:06 a.m. after the KOSPI 200 Futures Index fell more than five percent from the previous trading day.
This was the third sell-side sidecar this month.
Then at 10:31 a.m., a circuit breaker, which halts trading for 20 minutes, was activated after the KOSPI plunged more than eight percent intraday.
It was the second circuit breaker this month.
The last time a circuit breaker was activated twice in a single month on the KOSPI market was in March 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Both the sidecar and the circuit breaker were activated just three days after the previous ones.
Meanwhile, the won-dollar exchange rate posted the highest figure since the 2009 global financial crisis, after the Middle East conflict drove global oil prices past 100 U.S. dollars per barrel.
The South Korean won weakened against the U.S. dollar by 19-point-one won, trading at one-thousand-495-point-five won per dollar as of 3:30 p.m.
Analysts said tensions have escalated in the financial market after oil prices broke through the psychological barrier of 100 dollars a barrel, adding that the KOSPI’s drop reflected the high exchange rate and global oil prices.
The tech-heavy KOSDAQ lost 52-point-39 points, or four-point-54 percent, to close at one-thousand-102-point-28.
A sidecar was also activated on the KOSDAQ market after the KOSDAQ 150 spot and futures indices fell sharply.
Bae Joo-yon, KBS World Radio News.