KOSPI slightly down on selling by individuals…Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix also fall

The KOSPI is trading slightly lower in early trading. It rose at the open and even tested the 3,500 level, but soon lost momentum. The move appears to be a knock-on effect from the overnight U.S. session, where Jerome Powell, chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed), said the market was "overvalued."

As of 9:09 a.m. on the 24th, the KOSPI was trading at 3,477.17, down 9.02 points (0.26%) from the previous day. It initially rose to 3,497.95 and set a new high, but turned lower amid selling by individual investors.

In the cash market, individual and institutional investors have each net-sold stocks worth 50.8 billion won and 4.3 billion won, respectively. Foreigners are buying stocks worth 56.0 billion won.

Top market-cap names are broadly trading lower.

Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are down 0.24% and 0.55%, respectively. This follows roughly a 3% drop by NVIDIA in the overnight U.S. session. Concerns that NVIDIA's planned US$100 billion investment in OpenAI could be seen as providing money to buy NVIDIA's artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators have weakened investor sentiment toward the tech sector. However, Micron's strong results released after the U.S. regular session ended have prevented a larger decline for Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix.

Samsung Biologics is unchanged, but Celltrion is down 2.04%.

Hyundai Motor and Kia are down 0.57% and 0.19%, respectively.

Meanwhile, Hanwha Aerospace is up 3.59% and KB Financial is up 0.69%.

The KOSDAQ is trading at 868.86, down 3.35 points (0.38%) from the previous day. In that market, individuals are buying stocks worth 28.1 billion won, while foreigners and institutions are selling stocks worth 22.6 billion won and 3.4 billion won, respectively.

Top market-cap KOSDAQ names are also mostly under pressure.

In particular, Peptron and Samchundang Pharmaceutical are down 3.9% and 4.07%, respectively.

Pharmaresearch and LigaChem Bio are up 0.52% and 0.87%, respectively.

In the Seoul foreign exchange market, the won–dollar rate is trading at 1,393.2 won per dollar, down 0.8 won (0.06%) from the previous day.

Major U.S. indexes closed lower. Jerome Powell, chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed), said the stock market "seems quite overvalued," which worsened investor sentiment. On the 23rd (local time) at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 46,292.78, down 88.76 points (0.19%); the S&P 500 fell 36.83 points (0.55%) to 6,656.92; and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 215.50 points (0.95%) to 22,573.47.

Han Kyung-woo, Hankyung.com reporter case@hankyung.com