Foreign investors continued their spree in the South Korean stock market, marking an unprecedented quarterly volume.
According to the Financial Supervisory Service, foreign investors poured a total of 15.8 trillion won ($11.67 billion) into local shares in the first quarter of this year, the highest figure since the agency began compiling data in 1998.
In March alone, approximately 5.1 trillion won flowed into the domestic stock market from overseas, extending the streak of net purchases by foreign investors for the fifth consecutive month. The investments included net purchases of 4.1 trillion won in the benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index and an additional 887 billion won in the secondary tech-heavy bourse, Kosdaq, as reported by the agency.
This follows foreign investors’ net purchase of around 7.8 trillion won in the local stock market in February and 3.5 trillion won in January.
Breaking down the recent activity, the FSS highlighted that European investors made the largest purchases last month, totaling 3.3 trillion won, followed by American investors with 1.2 trillion won and Asian investors with 700 billion won.
Regarding the contributors to the inflow, investors from the United States and the United Kingdom led with net purchases of 2.2 trillion won and 1.1 trillion won, respectively. Conversely, investors from Canada were the largest sellers, offloading a total of 1 trillion won, followed by Saudi Arabia with 600 billion won.
As a result, the aggregate volume held by offshore investors surged by 58.1 trillion won in the previous month, totaling 820.1 trillion won in Korean shares by the end of March. This represents approximately 29 percent of the entire market capitalization.
Among offshore investors, those from the US held the largest share at 40 percent, equivalent to 324.9 trillion won, followed by European investors with 256.5 trillion won and Asian investors with 120.3 trillion won.
The FSS also noted that foreigners net purchased 2.36 trillion won of listed bonds and received 8.2 trillion won in repayment at maturity, collecting a total of 5.85 trillion won net. As of the end of March, the bond holdings totaled 244.3 trillion won, constituting 9.6 percent of the total bond market, down 4.5 trillion won from the previous month.
Meanwhile, foreigners predominantly bought shares in the semiconductor and auto industries in the first quarter. According to the Korea Exchange, they acquired 5.5 trillion won worth of shares in Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest supplier of memory chips, followed by 2.14 trillion won worth of shares in leading carmaker Hyundai Motor and 1.75 trillion won worth of shares in No. 2 chipmaker SK Hynix.
