Half of stock trading this year carried out by day traders: KSE

SEOUL, Sept. 25 (Yonhap) -- Nearly half of South Korea's stock trading this year was carried out by day traders, with individual investors accounting for the lion's share of such transactions, the Korea Stock Exchange (KSE) said Monday.

About 48.02 percent or 89.5 billion shares of the total 186.5 billion shares were traded by day traders between Jan. 1 and Sept. 15 on the KOSPI and KOSDAQ bourses, according to the statistics provided by the KSE.

Day trading refers to the buying and selling of a security within a trading day and closing all positions before the market ends for the day.

The figure for day traders is the highest in the past five years.

The figures have been moving up gradually since 2013 when it fell to 42.30 percent from 48.58 percent the previous year.

Day trading at South Korea's tech-heavy KOSDAQ market in terms of trading volume hit a record 51.57 percent this year, the highest since 2005 when such figures were first made available.

Day trading at the main KOSPI bourse, meanwhile, fell slightly to 40.85 percent this year from 41.29 percent last year.

In terms of trading value, 420 trillion won (US$ 371 billion) or 29.38 percent of the total 1,429 trillion won worth of stocks were traded by day traders this year.

The proportion is a bit lower than the 31.65 percent last year.

Individual investors accounted for 95.58 percent of the total daily trading on the KOSPI and KOSDAQ bourses this year, followed 3.71 percent by foreign investors and 0.36 percent by institutional investors.

Securities of Hanjin Shipping Co., which went into bankruptcy early this year, topped the list of stocks most heavily traded by day traders, at 2.36 billion shares. Next were Anam Electronics Co. at 1.15 billion shares and SK Securities Co. at 1.01 billion shares.

hdh@yna.co.kr
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