The war-induced sell-off in global stocks continued on Wednesday, with the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) having to halt trading at one point to allow nervous investors to take a breather.
The SET Index ended the day down 81.90 points (5.3%) at 1,384.61, with heavy turnover of 159 billion baht — about three times the normal average. The index has now lost 9.4% since the close last Friday, shortly before Israel and the US launched their attacks on Iran.
On a day when local institutions (5.4 billion baht) and brokers (9.5 billion baht) were net sellers of Thai shares, bargain-hunting foreign investors were net buyers of just over 1 billion baht. Retail investors were also net buyers of 13.9 billion baht on Wednesday.
Panic swept through South Korea’s trading floors on Wednesday as concerns over the Middle East war sent the world’s hottest stock market to its biggest-ever selloff.
The Kospi Index plunged another 12 per cent following a 7.2 per cent drop in the previous session, as heavyweights Samsung Electronics Co., SK Hynix Inc. and Hyundai Motor Co. tumbled. The rout triggered a 20-minute trading halt early in the session. Of more than 800 stocks on the benchmark, only 10 finished in the green.
From Wall Street strategists to mom-and-pop traders, few saw it coming. Optimism on artificial intelligence and the ensuing demand for memory chips was so strong that retail investors were piling in with borrowed money and analysts were raising their already-bullish calls on Korean equities.
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Last week, the Kospi index topped 6,000 for the first time. The surge in Korean shares brought overall Korea’s market capitalization to about $3.76 trillion, making it the No. 9 market globally. The Korean market became larger than those of bigger economies like France and Germany.