SEOUL, June 5 (Korea Bizwire) — Emboldened by a recent market bull run, South Korean retail investors are scrambling to borrow money to buy shares in anticipation of price gains down the road, data showed Friday. Outstanding margin loans to retail investors stood at 11.4 trillion won (US$9.3 billion) as of Wednesday, according to the [...]
SEOUL, May 27 (Korea Bizwire) — Kyobo Life Insurance Co., one of South Korea’s leading life insurers, said Tuesday that it has started developing and operating its own insurance fraud prediction system that incorporates artificial intelligence (AI) machine learning technology. K-FDS (Kyobo Fraud Detection System) is a system that enables AI to learn insurance fraud [...]
SEOUL, May 22 (Korea Bizwire) – The market capitalization of Samsung Biologics Co. and internet giant Naver Corp. has jumped sharply on South Korea’s main stock market over a one-year period, despite the coronavirus impact on the equities markets, data showed Friday. Samsung Biologics’ market cap stood at 40.3 trillion won (US$32.6 billion) at Thursday [...]
SEOUL, May 19 (Korea Bizwire) — Individual investors are flocking to direct stock investment, choosing to bet on their own picks over brokerage houses’ funds, data showed Tuesday. Outstanding margin loans came to 9.95 trillion won (US$8.14 billion) as of Friday, up 10.1 percent from a month ago, according to the data from the Korea [...]
SEOUL, May 13 (Korea Bizwire) — Foreign investors continued to net sell South Korean stocks in April amid the coronavirus pandemic but boosted their purchase of local bonds, central bank data showed Wednesday. Foreigners net sold US$4.32 billion worth of local shares in the month, according to the data from the Bank of Korea (BOK). [...]
SEOUL, May 11 (Korea Bizwire) — Individual investors accumulated 50 trillion won (US$41 billion) in stocks and stock investment deposits, holding greater influence over the benchmark index since the beginning of the year, data showed Monday. From Jan. 2 to May 8, retail investors bought a net 30.8 trillion won worth of local shares, 26.1 [...]
SEOUL, May 11 (Korea Bizwire) — Foreign investors have ramped up their investment in South Korean bonds this year amid the country’s relatively favorable economic conditions, data showed Monday. Offshore investors held 140.9 trillion won (US$115 billion) worth of listed government and corporate bonds as of end-April, up 17 trillion won from the end of [...]
SEOUL, May 6 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s top internet-only lender Kakao Bank said Wednesday its first-quarter net profit nearly tripled due mainly to increased interest income. Net profit came to 18.5 billion won (US$15.2 million) in the January-March period, up about 181 percent from a year earlier, the lender said in a regulatory filing. [...]
SEOUL, May 6 (Korea Bizwire) — Gold funds in South Korea have shined over the past three months on investors’ flight to safety amid the coronavirus pandemic, but oil funds have fared dismally on tumbling crude prices, a market tracker said Wednesday. The three-month average return of 12 local gold funds with assets of 1 [...]
SEOUL, May 1 (Korea Bizwire) — Overseas stock purchases by South Korean retail investors jumped to a record high level in April amid signs that the coronavirus outbreak is slowing down, data showed Friday. Korean retail investors bought US$2.01 billion worth of foreign stocks from April 1-27, marking the largest overseas stock buying on a [...]