Foreign investors bought a net 2 trillion won (US$1.7 billion) worth of South Korean stocks last month due to a growing appetite for emerging-market assets. (image: KobiaMedia/ Korea Bizwire)
SEOUL, May 16 (Korea Bizwire) – Foreign investors bought a net 2 trillion won (US$1.7 billion) worth of South Korean stocks last month due to a growing appetite for emerging-market assets, the country’s financial regulator said Monday.
Foreigners continued to buy Korean stocks for the second consecutive month in April, bringing their accumulated holdings of local stocks to 432.8 trillion won, or 29 percent of the total market capitalization, the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) said in a statement.
“Investors, particularly from the U.S. and Britain, were the leading buyers as the U.S. Federal Reserve is unlikely to raise rates sharply this year,” an FSS official said.
They bought 600 billion won worth of local bonds in April after scooping up the same amount of bonds the previous month, the statement said. There is a separate bond-trading market in the Korea Exchange (KRX).
Their accumulated bond holdings reached 98 trillion won, or 6.1 percent of the total bonds traded in the KRX’s bond market, it said.
(Yonhap)
