SEOUL – Foreign investors have consistently purchased more South Korean stocks than they sold for the seventh consecutive month through May, focusing their investments primarily on the KOSPI and KOSDAQ markets.
According to Yonhap News Agency, foreign investors netted a total of 1.5 trillion won (approximately US$1.08 billion) in stocks during May, with the main KOSPI market seeing purchases of 1.3 trillion won and the tech-heavy KOSDAQ market accounting for the remaining 161 billion won. This sustained buying trend has been ongoing since November of the previous year.
Investors from the United States led the charge with purchases worth 2.4 trillion won, followed by British investors who bought 1.4 trillion won of Seoul shares. Conversely, investors from Singapore sold off 1.3 trillion won worth of shares, representing a net offload in the region.
As the month concluded, foreign ownership of listed shares in South Korea totaled 791.3 trillion won, making up 29.1 percent of the overall market capitalization.