Seoul shares trim earlier gains in late morning trade

The local stock market rebounded this week from Friday's 3.09 percent loss following Britain's vote to quit the European Union. Trillions of dollars have been wiped out from global equity value since Friday.

To ease the fallout from Britain's withdrawal from the 28-nation single biggest economic bloc in the world, governments and central banks worldwide said they will inject liquidity into markets and consider further monetary easing steps, helping investor sentiment for now, analysts said.

The Korean stock market also got a boost from the government's 20 trillion won fiscal stimulus package announced Tuesday to support Asia's fourth-largest economy, they said.

"However, investors will closely watch whether the promised policy measures can be carried out if the markets run wild," Mirae Asset Daewoo analyst Ko Seung-hee said.

Foreigners continued to buy domestic stocks from Wednesday but in small volume after offloading a combined 755 billion won from Friday through Tuesday. They bought a net 56.4 billion won stocks Wednesday and bought 16.6 billion won as of 11:20 a.m. Thursday.

In contrast, institutions continued to sell domestic stocks for a second straight session on Thursday after buying nearly 1 trillion won from June 22-28. They sold a net 66.3 billion won as of 11:20 a.m.

Major large-cap stocks advanced across the board. Market bellwether Samsung Electronics Co. rose 0.64 percent.

Leading cosmetics maker AmorePacific Corp. climbed 0.93 percent and No. 2 chipmaker SK hynix Inc. was up 1.41 percent.

Among losers, state-run utility Korea Electric Power Corp. fell 0.33 percent, top carmaker Hyundai Motor Co. shed 1.44 percent, and No. 1 steelmaker POSCO was down 0.99 percent.

The local currency was changing hands at 1,152.75 won against the U.S. dollar, up 7.45 won from the previous session's close. (Yonhap)