KOSPI gains intraday as rate-cut hopes rise amid U.S. shutdown countdown

The KOSPI index is trading strong intraday. With the U.S. federal government entering a 'shutdown' (temporary suspension of operations) countdown, expectations of an interest rate cut appear to have come to the fore. The three major U.S. stock indices also rose overnight.

According to the Korea Exchange, as of 11:37 a.m. on the 1st the KOSPI was trading at 3451.58, up 26.98 points (0.79%) from the previous day.

Foreigners and institutions had net buying of 387.8 billion won and 219.4 billion won, respectively. Individuals alone had net selling of 601.5 billion won.

On the main bourse, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix were each up around 2.2% and 2.9%. This is attributed to NVIDIA rising 2.6% in the U.S. market overnight. NVIDIA surpassed a market capitalization of US$4.5 trillion for the first time that day on news that U.S. data-center operator CoreWeave had signed a computing-power supply deal with Meta Platforms worth up to US$14.2 billion (about 20 trillion won).

SK D&D's stock surged more than 13% on news of a tender offer by private equity firm Hahn & Company. On the day, SK Discovery disclosed that its board had decided to sell 5,821,751 shares of subsidiary SK D&D to Hahn & Company.

The KOSDAQ index was trading at 846.18, up 4.19 points (0.5%) from the previous day.

Institutions alone had net buying of 56.2 billion won. Individuals and foreigners had net selling of 4.4 billion won and 39.7 billion won, respectively.

On the KOSDAQ, leading stock Alteogen was up more than 1%. RigaChem Bio and ABL Bio were also trading up around 6% and 3%, respectively. By contrast, PharmaResearch was down around 6%.

The won–dollar exchange rate opened at 1404.2 won, up 1.3 won.

Min-kyung Shin, Hankyung.com reporter radio@hankyung.com