Foreign investors offloaded stocks worth 13 trillion won ($9.3 billion) on the local stock market in April, surpassing the records set during the COVID-19 pandemic and the global financial crisis.
According to the watchdog Financial Supervisory Service on Friday, offshore investors sold stocks amounting to a net 13.59 trillion won on the local stock market last month, continuing the nine-month-long sell-off move. The amount surpasses the 13.45 trillion won record set in March 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the 9.87 trillion won of August 2007 amid the global financial crisis.
In recent months, the local stock market has remained sluggish, with the US administration’s tariff policies expected to weigh in on the export-dependent Korean economy.
Foreigners dumped stocks worth 12.32 trillion won on the benchmark Kospi, while dropping 1.27 trillion won on the secondary bourse Kosdaq.
With the combined April figure, foreign investors ditched stocks worth a total of 18.74 trillion won during the first four months of this year.
The UK was the largest net seller by country, with investors offloading 8.9 trillion won, followed by the US at 1.5 trillion won. On the other hand, investors from Ireland and Norway were net buyers, buying an additional 93 billion won and 75 billion won worth of shares, respectively.
As of late April, the outstanding balance of local stocks held by foreign investors stood at 707.1 trillion won, with the Kospi and the Kosdaq combined, taking up 26.5 percent of the total market cap.
By region, the US owned the largest amount of local stocks, holding stocks worth 284.5 trillion won (40.2 percent), followed by Europe at 216.5 trillion won (30.6 percent), Asia at 103.9 trillion won (14.7 percent) and the Middle East at 10.6 trillion won (1.5 percent).
silverstar@heraldcorp.com
