Seoul Stock Exchange falls 3.6% over S Korea infections increase
Seoul, Aug 20 (efe-epa) .- The Seoul Stock Exchange closed Thursday with a sharp decline of 3.66 percent in its main indicator, the Kospi, mainly due to investors’ fear of the continued increase in COVID-19 infections in South Korea.
The Kospi lost 86.32 points and stood at 2,274.22 integers, while the Kosdaq technological index fell 27.60 points or 3.37 percent, to 791.14 points, in a day which moved 16.9 trillion won ($ 14.2 billion).
The Seoul market echoed the concern over the increase in infections in the capital and its surroundings, where most of the 288 new infections announced Thursday by the South Korean authorities have occurred.
Due to the increase in daily infections that the South Korean capital region has suffered for a week, it was also decreed that the area should observe “Level 2” distancing, to which new measures announced Thursday were added to limit demonstrations or concentrations of more than 10 people in the capital.
Another factor that contributed to the pessimism on the Seoul Stock Exchange were the minutes published the day before by the US Federal Reserve (Fed), which predicted that the pandemic will continue to “weigh heavily” on the United States. However, the reserve acknowledged that “the activity and employment have picked up slightly” in recent months.
Tech giant Samsung Electronics, the benchmark for Kospi, ended the day down 4.15 percent, while the country’s second-largest chipmaker, SK hynix, lost 4.27 percent.
The stocks of internet and digital services operators Naver (3.02 percent) and Kakao (3.19 percent) also suffered significant losses.
In the automotive sector, the national leader Hyundai Motor lost 5.78 percent, while the main South Korean chemist, LG Chem, fell 2.34 percent. EFE-EPA
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