The KOSPI steadied on Thursday morning while its chip stocks kept falling, and retail investors were the ones selling

The chip stocks were still falling.

That is the part of Thursday morning in Seoul worth separating out, because the index was not. Kim Daehyun at The Asia Business Daily reports the KOSPI opened at 5,681.77, up 18.53 points or 0.33 percent, and was at 5,678.45 at 10:15 a.m., up 15.21 points or 0.27 percent. Against Wednesday's intraday low of 5,262.77 that is a gain of 415.68 points, or 7.9 percent, and it leaves the index roughly 39.5 percent below the intraday record of 9,385.59 it set on 19 June.

The KOSDAQ did not follow. It opened at 654.72, down 1.20 percent, and was at 656.32 at the same moment, down 6.36 points or 0.96 percent.

Which sectors

By sector on the main board, metals rose 3.54 percent, transport and storage 3.52 percent, transportation equipment and parts 3.51 percent, food and beverages and tobacco 3.22 percent, and chemicals 3.16 percent. Electrical and electronics fell 1.56 percent, medical precision equipment 0.87 percent and manufacturing 0.47 percent.

The individual names carry the same split. Hanwha Aerospace rose 9.63 percent, LG Energy Solution 7.49 percent, Hana Financial Group 5.81 percent, Celltrion 5.78 percent, KB Financial Group 5.31 percent, HD Hyundai Heavy Industries 5.07 percent, Shinhan Financial Group 4.98 percent, Samsung C&T 3.50 percent and Hyundai Mobis 2.25 percent. On the other side, SK Square fell 4.59 percent, SK hynix 3.71 percent, Samsung Electro-Mechanics 2.82 percent and Samsung Electronics preferred shares 1.30 percent.

The KOSDAQ decline has a shape too, and it is narrower. Jusung Engineering fell 12.75 percent, PharmaResearch 8.82 percent, PSK 6.88 percent, Simmtech 4.96 percent, EO Technics 4.62 percent, Wonik IPS 4.57 percent and Leeno Industrial 3.44 percent. Most of those make semiconductor equipment or test and packaging kit. EcoPro rose 4.60 percent and EcoPro BM 4.43 percent on the same board.

Who was selling

Foreign investors bought a net 433 billion won of KOSPI shares and institutions a net 683.1 billion won. Individual investors sold a net 1.104 trillion won. On the KOSDAQ the same three lines read plus 33.5 billion, plus 57.6 billion and minus 92.3 billion.

Set that against the two sessions before it. On Tuesday, when the index fell 10.84 percent, foreign investors sold nearly 5 trillion won of KOSPI shares and retail investors bought a net 4.3 trillion won. On Wednesday, as of 2:30 p.m., retail investors had sold nearly 2 trillion won and foreign investors 1 trillion won while institutions bought 2.9 trillion won.

So the buyer of first resort has changed twice in three sessions. Thursday morning is the first of them in which foreign investors were on the buying side at all.

The target cut underneath it

Mirae Asset Securities cut its target price for SK hynix on Wednesday to 2.8 million won from 4.2 million won, a reduction of 33 percent, and kept its buy rating, according to Park Jung-hyun at the Seoul Economic Daily. Kim Young-gun, the analyst who wrote it, put the new target on a target price-to-book ratio of 4.6 times a 12-month forward book value per share of 612,880 won, down from a target multiple of 6.5 times. Against Tuesday's close of 1.55 million won that implies 80.6 percent of upside.

He said the recent correction in the share price is excessive relative to fundamentals, and that under a valuation framework linked to global peers an adjustment in line with the industry-wide fall in share prices is unavoidable. Both sentences are his.

The note also carries annual profit forecasts. They are not reproduced here, because the English text of the report as published contradicts itself on whether the 266.8 trillion won figure for this year is revenue or operating profit, and a number that could be either is not a number.

The document

There is none, and the reason is the same one this desk recorded on Wednesday. The Korea Exchange publishes no English-language notice of an index level, and its statistics portal at data.krx.co.kr returns a login page. The levels and flows above rest on a named reporter at a Seoul outlet, reporting a mid-session snapshot taken at 10:15 a.m. local time. Seoul trades until 3:30 p.m. Nothing here is a close.