South Korea stocks, won slip on trade war woes; finmin monitoring volatility

SEOUL: Round-up of South Korean financial markets:

** South Korean shares tumbled on Monday in line with other Asian markets, as investors remained cautious due to an escalation in U.S.-China trade war over the weekend. The Korean won fell, as benchmark bond yields slipped on safe-haven demand.

** U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday heaped another 5% tariffs on some Chinese goods, hours after China unveiled retaliatory tariffs on $75 billion worth of U.S. goods as the president demanded U.S. companies to move their operations out of China.

** The dispute escalated over the weekend shaking global financial markets as the White House on Sunday said that President Donald Trump wishes he had raised tariffs on Chinese goods even higher last week.

** South Korea's vice finance minister on Monday warned against one-way bets on the won       , while adding that the authorities were closely monitoring the Chinese yuan's movements as the correlation between the two currencies' movement has increased.

** The Seoul stock market's main KOSPI fell 32.39 points, or 1.66%, to 1,915.91 as of 0230 GMT, with the market heavyweights Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix dropping 1.6% and 3.8%, respectively.

** Foreigners were net sellers of 71.6 billion won ($59.04 million) worth of shares on the main board.

** The won was quoted at 1,218.3 per dollar on the onshore settlement platform, 0.63% lower than its previous close at 1,210.6.

** In offshore trading, the won was quoted at 1,218.5 per U.S. dollar, down 0.5% from the previous day, while in non-deliverable forward trading its one-month contract was quoted at 1,217.4 per dollar.

** MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was down 2.15%, after U.S. stocks plunged in the previous session on fears of trade war escalation.

Japanese stocks fell 2.28%.

** The KOSPI has fallen 6.13% so far this year, and/but lost 6.4% in the previous 30 trading sessions.

** The current price-to-earnings ratio is 12.10, the dividend yield is 1.28% and the market capitalisation is 1,242.04 trillion won.

** The trading volume during the session in the KOSPI index was 162.02 million shares and, of the total traded issues of 889, the number of advancing shares was 78.

** The won has lost 8.4% against the U.S dollar so far this year.

** In money and debt markets, September futures on three-year treasury bonds rose 0.15 points to 111.36.

** The most liquid 3-year Korean treasury bond yield fell by 5.4 basis points to 1.118%. The benchmark 10-year yield also fell by 7.3 basis points to 1.190%, as it tracked the U.S. 10-year Treasury debt  falling to their lowest since mid-2016.