Top 10 Kospi stocks' market cap approaches 45%

South Korea’s 10 largest stocks trading on the main bourse Kospi are seeing its combined market cap account for 45 percent of Kospi constitutents‘ total market cap as local retail investors flock to the large-caps betting on changes in the domestic industry.

According to data by the Korea Exchange, the top 10 large-caps on the Kospi stock market took up 44.78 percent of Kospi’s market cap on average in August, up over 11 percentage points on-year.

The figure has been on a constant rise since April, when retail investors started to come to the fore as the financial market was experiencing a high liquidity while Korea‘s industries showed signs of recovery from the coronavirus impact.

As of Friday, Kospi was trading 794 constitutents, and their total market cap stood at some 1.600 trillion won ($1.35 trillion).

This partly stems from Korean retail investors‘ bet on large caps in line with their stock price surge. Solely in August, retail investors net bought Kospi shares worth 460 trillion won, while from January to August, retail net buying on Kospi reached 3,881.3 trillion won.

The 10 largest stocks by market cap on the Kospi are Samsung Electronics’ common and preferred stocks, SK hynix, Naver, LG Chem, Samsung Biologics, Celltrion, Hyundai Motor, Kakao and Samsung SDI. Samsung Electronics is the market bellwether, with its common shares representing over 20 percent of the Kospi market cap.

By Son Ji-hyoung (consnow@heraldcorp.com)