코스피 소폭 올라 2,080선 회복…코스닥은 엿새 만에 상승
South Korean shares closed a tad higher on Tuesday as slightly more optimistic comments from Washington and Beijing over trade negotiations relieved some concerns.
Our Won Jung-hwan has this report.
Korea's benchmark index, the KOSPI, opened sharply lower on Tuesday over concerns about U.S.-China trade talks,... but rebounded by midway through the trading session to close the day point-14 percent at 2-thousand-81-point-84.
It was a slight recovery from the previous day when the index plunged 1-point-3-8-percent to mark its lowest close since January 14.
Experts blame the latest jitters on the renewed trade dispute between the world's two largest economies and attributed the rebound to excessive concerns the previous day.
"There has been a recovery in the KOSPI market today I think because they overreacted yesterday."
But concerns about overall sentiment still remain.
"However, things are very unstable. We don't know how President Trump will react, we don't know how President Xi Jinping will react. We don't know if this protectionist trend will continue and get bigger, we don't know how China and U.S. will retaliate. So I think market psychology is very unstable, they are very nervous right now."
Meanwhile, the local currency renewed a more than two-year low from just the previous day... It closed just below 1-thousand-1-hundred-90 won to the dollar, down 1-point-90 won from Monday.
It was the fourth fall in the past five sessions and experts are concerned the continued depreciation could negatively impact the domestic economy.
"One of the reasons why there were a lot of foreign investment in Korea even though Korean policy interest rate was lower than U.S. policy rate, is that Korean won was expected to gain value, appreciate,... And if Korean won turns to trend of weakening, those investors may decide that Korea is not good place to invest and they might withdraw foreign investment."
The better-than-expected performance by the U.S. economy in comparison to the weakening local economy is believed to be the main reason behind the won's continued depreciation.
Won Jung-hwan, Arirang News.
