South Korean shares rise on upbeat trade data, fading volatility woes

SEOUL: Round-up of South Korean financial markets:

South Korean shares rose on Monday, as upbeat exports data for January lifted investor sentiment, while some of the concerns over volatile retail trading receded.

The won weakened, while the benchmark bond yield rose.

By 03:23 GMT, the benchmark KOSPI rose 60.97 points, or 2.05%, to 3,037.18.

Foreigners were net buyers of 113.5 billion won ($101.57 million) worth of shares on the main board.

Investors are slowly moving away from the Gamestop drama and are focusing on economic data again, said Seo Sang-young, an analyst at Kiwoom Securities said.

January exports jumped 11.4% to $48.01 billion, government data showed, beating the 9.8% forecast in a Reuters survey.

An army of retail investors that routed Wall Street's professionals in recent days was dealt a blow last week, after online brokerages restricted purchases of red-hot GameStop and other stocks.

The won was quoted at 1,119.0 per dollar on the onshore settlement platform, 0.02% lower than its previous close at 1,118.8.

In offshore trading, the won was quoted at 1,117.5 per dollar, up 0.0% from the previous day, while in non-deliverable forward trading its one-month contract was quoted at 1,116.9.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was down 1.37%.

The KOSPI has risen 5.70% so far this year, and/ gained 8.0% in the previous 30 trading sessions.

The trading volume during the session in the KOSPI index was 589.17 million shares. Of the total traded issues of 910, the number of advancing shares was 622.

The won has lost 2.9% against the dollar so far this year.

The most liquid 3-year Korean treasury bond yield rose by 2.3 basis points to 0.994%, while the benchmark 10-year yield rose by 2.4 basis points to 1.792%.