dailypro2020

KOSPI at 7,800: National Pension Service Decision Looms as Korea's Rally Meets Its Biggest Test I've been tracking the KOSPI rally all week, and the move to 7,800 tells me something important. the third week of May delivered one of the strangest trading sessions in Korean market history. On May 22, the KOSPI closed at 7,812, up 0.41% — a modest gain for the benchmark. But the KOSDAQ, Korea's tech-heavy secondary board, exploded 4.9% higher in a single day. That kind of divergence — KOSPI treading water while the KOSDAQ goes vertical — does not happen often, and when it does, it usually means something structural is shifting beneath the surface. This time, that something is a collision of two opposing forces: the heaviest foreign selling in Korean history, and the largest retail buying wave the market has ever seen. Which one wins depends largely on a single meeting scheduled for May 28. The National Pension Service's fund management committee will vote that day on i...

I think the fact that the line started forming before the market opened tells you something about the mood right now. Not for a concert or a new iPhone, for a government-backed equity fund. South Korea's National Participation Growth Fund launched on May 22 and sold out in 10 minutes at Mirae Asset Securities, the lead distributor. KB Kookmin, Shinhan, Hana, Woori, and NH Nonghyup all exhausted their allocations, both online and branch channels, within the morning session. My view is the structure is clever from a policy design standpoint. Retail investors put up 600 billion won. The government kicks in 120 billion won as a first-loss buffer, meaning the state absorbs the first 20% of any losses before retail capital takes a hit. The combined 720 billion won flows into a master fund that allocates across 10 sub-funds targeting semiconductors, secondary batteries, biotech, and robotics, Korea's designated strategic industries. Investors can contribute up to 100 million won ...