Stock Price of a Closing Day Collapsed Below 630 Points with 29P Drop

KOSPI fell down by 11.5% for consecutive five days and was off to 620 points this year.

KOSDAQ index also decreased by 18.8% for seven days and was off to the lowest points this year.

Nikkei Stock Averages of Japan was off to 8,578.95 yen decreased by 135.10 yen (1.55%). As a year-end stock price, it was the lowest points after 20 years since 1982.

Such as the Taiwanese Index (1.97%), Hong Kong index (1.84%) and ST Index of Singapore (1.18%), the stock prices of other Asian countries all came down.

Being the last trading day of the year, on December 30, KOSPI was off to 627.55 points decreased by 29.37 points(4.47%) over a previous day.

Compared with the end of last year, it declined by 66.15 points(9.6%) and it showed the lowest points after 70 days since October 14 (614.27). KOSPI once declined to 613.76 points decreased by 43.16 points.

KOSDAQ Index was off to 44.36 points decreased by 1.92 points(4.15%). It slumped to the lowest points decreased by 38.6% after October 11 (43.67).

For issues of `new low price of 52 points` which decreased to the lowest level this year, there are 253 issues in the Exchange and 292 issues in KOSDAQ. Owing to the large decline of the index and the stock price of individual issues, the investors` sensible index was larger than other years.

Owing to a nuclear problem of North Korea, foreign investors sold securities for 149.1 billion won, and brought about the slump of the stock price.

As foreign investors put offerings in large quantities in a state of the aggravated investment psychology due to a possibility of US-Iraq war, the stock price suddenly fell down without trading because of no buyers.

At that day, the trading values were 3,431.1 billion won. However, it was just 1,500 billion won except the stocks interchange of SK Telecom and KT after hours (SK Telecom for 4,450,000 securities, KT for 5,000,000 securities).

The customer`s deposit (basis of 27th day) was 8, 238.5 billion won decreased by 333 billion won over the previous day. It approached 8,152.9 billion of October 5 which was the lowest amounts.

Chan-Sun Hong hcs@donga.com