By Jihoon Lee
SEOUL (Reuters) -South Korean shares fell for a second straight session on Monday, with buying and selling curbs activated for the primary time in 4 years, as danger urge for food dampened throughout international monetary markets on U.S. recession fears.
The benchmark fell as a lot as 7% in afternoon commerce, after dropping 3.7% on Friday, and was set to put up its worst session since March 2020.
The autumn, which triggered a sidecar buying and selling curb on the KOSPI for the primary time since 2020, was consistent with the broader Asian market’s weak spot, with the MSCI Asia Pacific ex-Japan Index down 2.5% and falling 6.9%.
Sidecar was additionally activated on the junior KOSDAQ index, which was down 7.1% as of 0425 GMT.
A sidecar is activated when index futures fall or rise sharply and halts programme buying and selling for 5 minutes to curb steep price actions.
Chip heavyweights Samsung Electronics (KS:) and SK Hynix dropped greater than 8%, monitoring steep declines within the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index, which had pushed Wall Road’s rally on optimism round synthetic intelligence.
The KOSPI was down 13% from a six-month peak of two,860.42 hit in July.
“The market has entered territory of extreme fear amid a slump in U.S. big tech stocks, worries about a slowing U.S. economy and sharp declines in Asian markets,” mentioned Kim Dae-jun, analyst, Korea Funding Securities.
Earlier within the day, South Korean authorities issued a number of feedback to calm investor sentiment, with the finance minister vowing to answer heightened market volatility in accordance with a contingency plan.
The U.S. inventory futures fell greater than 1% in Asian buying and selling hours on Monday, after a heavy sell-off final Friday that confirmed the Nasdaq was in correction territory.
The U.S. unemployment charge jumped to close a three-year excessive, knowledge confirmed on Friday, heightening fears the labour market was deteriorating and probably making the economic system susceptible to recession.
The South Korean received weakened on Monday, after hitting a greater than two-month excessive of 1,356.0 per greenback on Friday, as foreigners offered native shares value greater than 1.3 trillion received ($958.41 million).
($1 = 1,356.4200 received)