S. Korea stock performance ranks bottom among OECD members this year

December 25, 2013 Leave a comment

S. Korea stock performance ranks bottom among OECD members this year

2013.12.24 15:26:15

South Korea’s equity index growth was ranked 30th among 34 OECD members this year. In contrast, Japan’s stock index surged over 50 percent thanks to the Abenomics effect, grabbing the top place. The KOSPI closed at 1,983.35 Friday, posting a 0.7 percent decline this year, said sources at the financial investment center and Korea Center for International Finance Tuesday. The index performance took the 30th plance among indexes of 34 member countries. Only five of OECD members including the KOSPI of Korea saw their stock indexes retreat: IGPA of Chile dropped 13.6 percent, ISE100 of Turkey 11.0 percent, PX of the Czech Republic 5.9 percent and IPC of Mexico 3.5 percent. Indexes of the remaining 30 members advanced. Bullish stock indexes of Japan and the US led the global stock markets this year, while that of Korea declined, showing a serious decoupling. The Korean index turned sluggish as Japan’s Abenomics weakened the yen, which undermined Korea’s export competitiveness, and decreasing trading volume and taper of quantitative easing have dampened investor confidence, dragging down the index. Securities firms share the view that the KOSPI would make headway next year, but their forecasts diverge on whether the index would remain soft in the first half and climb in the second half, or vice versa.

Filed under Macro Trends

Unknown's avatarAbout bambooinnovator
Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

Leave a comment