Seoul stocks surged by nearly 17 percent Friday morning, as strong gains in chip shares lifted the Kospi nearly 1,000 points and back above the 6,500 threshold.
As of 10:20 a.m., the Kospi was trading 16.8 percent higher at 6,530 points, after hitting an intraday high of 6,548.64, up 17 percent, only minutes earlier. The benchmark opened 1.15 percent higher at 5,657.79, before rapidly advancing.
A buy-side sidecar was activated at 9:06 a.m., suspending program trading for five minutes. A similar curb was triggered on the Kosdaq, which was trading around 9.6 percent higher at 706.5 after touching an intraday high of 707.33.
The rebound was fueled by strong gains on Wall Street overnight, where technology stocks rallied on upbeat Microsoft earnings. The Nasdaq jumped 2.78 percent and the S&P 500 gained 1.66 percent, while the Philadelphia semiconductor index soared 8.2 percent, lifting sentiment toward Korean chip heavyweights.
On the Kospi, Samsung Electronics surged as much as 26.3 percent to 261,500 won ($182.20), while SK hynix soared 29.7 percent to 1,715,000 won. Related stocks also rallied sharply, with SK Square, SK hynix's largest shareholder, jumping nearly 30 percent.
Meanwhile, foreign investors drove the rally, buying a net 4 trillion won of Kospi shares within just 20 minutes. Retail investors were net sellers of 3.5 trillion won, while institutions offloaded some 500 billion won.
The won reversed its recent strengthening trend, trading 8.7 won weaker at 1,434.9 against the dollar as of around 10:20 a.m., having opened at 1,425.1.
By Choi Ji-won (jwc@heraldcorp.com)
