South Korea stocks up, won weaker; bitcoin shares slump as gov't measures loom

SEOUL: Round-up of South Korean financial markets:

South Korea's KOSPI stock index rose on Wednesday. The Korean won edged down on the local platform while bond

yields climbed. At 01:06 GMT, the KOSPI was up 8.12 points or 0.33 percent at 2,469.12.

Despite the broader market's gain, South Korea's bitcoin-lined shares slumped on news a government emergency meeting on cryptocurrency.

Vidente Co Ltd and Omnitel Inc, which hold stakes of South Korea's biggest bitcoin exchange Bithumb, fell 7.5 percent and 3.9 percent, respectively.

JCH Systems Inc, bitcoin mining-related company, dropped 4 percent.

The won was quoted at 1,093.1 per dollar on the onshore settlement platform, 0.06 percent weaker than its previous close at 1,092.4.

In offshore trading, the won was quoted at 1,092.59 per U.S. dollar, down 0.11 percent from the previous day, while in one-year non-deliverable forwards it was being

transacted at 1,086 per dollar. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was up 0.07 percent, after U.S. stocks ended the previous session with mild gains. Japanese stocks weakened 0.08 percent.  The KOSPI is up around 21.4 percent so far this year, and down by 2.47 percent in the previous 30 days. The current price-to-earnings ratio is 12.10, the dividend

yield is 1.28 percent and the market capitalisation is 1,242.04 trillion won.

The trading volume during the session on the KOSPI index was 75,879,000 shares, and of the total traded issues of 871, the number of advancing shares was 540.

Foreigners were net sellers of 38,477 million won worth of shares.

The U.S dollar has fallen 9.42 percent against the won this year. The won's high for the year is 1,075.71 per dollar on

November 29 2017 and low is 1,211.8 on January 3 2017. In money and debt markets, December futures on three-year

treasury bonds were unchanged at 108.28.

The Korean 3-month Certificate of Deposit benchmark rate was quoted at 1.66 percent compared with a previous close of 1.66 percent, while the benchmark 3-year Korean treasury bond yielded 2.079 percent, higher than the previous day's 2.08 percent.