BITPRESS | Where the money moves behind the news

Even experts can't say exactly why foreigners are dumping Korean stocks

Even after Samsung Electronics reported third-quarter operating profit of KRW 107.4 trillion (about $80.4 billion), foreign investors net sold KRW 2.0186 trillion (about $1.51 billion) of KOSPI stocks on Oct. 12, a day when...

Real Estate

1 in 13 Seoul home sales canceled. Trust the highs?

Of 83,776 Seoul apartment sales reported last year, 6,419 (7.66%) were later canceled, more than double the 3.41% of 2021, and the rate was higher in popular districts such as Guro (10.33%) and Seongdong (10.32%). A record...

Investing 101

Why the right to pollute got 3x pricier in a year

Korea cut its 2026-2030 emissions cap by 16.8% to 2.5373 billion tons, and as the period began, the price of an emission allowance (KAU25) rose 234.7% in a year, from KRW 8,800 to KRW 29,450. Because the...

Global Stocks

Americans are spending more. Why is Wall Street worried?

U.S. consumer spending rose 0.9% in August while after-tax income rose only 0.3%, and covering the gap pushed the saving rate down to 4.1%, the lowest since November...

Korean Stocks

Tourists are up. Why did Shinsegae stock fall 23% in a month?

Foreign visitors to Korea rose 21.6% to 15.05 million from January through August, but the won-dollar rate fell from the 1,550 range in early July to 1,338.5 won on Oct. 8, so the same $1,000 now buys about 211,500 fewer won...

Crypto

A U.S. crypto bill failed. Why isn't Coinbase the loser?

After the Clarity Act was blocked 49 to 50 in a procedural Senate vote on Sept. 15, the SEC and the CFTC rolled out three actions in 20 days, an exemption, a proposed rule and a request for comment, but the...

Crypto

Why did 99.6% of 87,000 crypto loan liquidations hit one exchange?

Of the 87,110 forced liquidations of crypto loans at South Korean exchanges from January 2025 to August 2026, 99.6% happened at Bithumb, yet Bithumb's August liquidation rate relative to loans taken out (3.67%) was lower than Coinone's and DigitalX's (4.94%)...

Real Estate

A year after loans were capped, why did Seongbuk home prices rise over 10 times as fast as Gangnam's?

In about a year after the Oct. 15, 2025, measures (Oct. 20, 2025, to Oct. 5, 2026), apartment prices rose 16.52% in Seongbuk and 1.40% in Gangnam, about 11.8 times as fast by rate of increase. Analysts say that...

Investing 101

It pays more interest than a bank deposit. But if the brokerage goes bust, what happens to your money?

Korea Investment & Securities is offering 5.0% a year for one year (new money) and Kiwoom Securities 5.8% a year for three months on brokerage notes, but unlike bank deposits, these are not covered by deposit insurance, under which the Korea...

Global Stocks

Nvidia made its fortune selling chips. Why does it want to buy an AI company?

Nvidia is in talks to buy U.S. open-model AI company Reflection AI, which it put $800 million into a year ago, or to raise its stake, the...

IT & Business

A $749 million AI newcomer is about to go public. Who pays two-thirds of its sales?

Elice Group, an AI cloud company set to list on KOSDAQ on Oct. 20, earned about 22.5 billion won ($16.8 million), or 65.6%, of its 34.4 billion won ($25.6 million) in first-half sales from the...

Korean Stocks

Small investors sold SK hynix after work. Who bought it that evening?

Individuals make up 89.4% of trading on the Korea Exchange's evening market (4-8 p.m.), but when individuals net sold 92.1 billion won ($69 million) of SK hynix, foreigners net bought 101.5 billion won ($76 million); while individuals bought...

Crypto

XRP's supply is fixed. So how did free XRP almost appear?

XRP was designed so that all 100 billion coins were created at once in 2012 and no more would ever be added, but developers found that payment math written in 2015 hid an error for...

Government Policy

Korea is about to tax crypto. Is it ready to start?

Under current law, from Jan. 1, 2027, making KRW 10 million (about $7,470) a year from crypto will mean about KRW 1.65 million (about $1,230) in tax (22% after a KRW 2.5...

Real Estate

Why Seoul's jeonse deposits rose faster than home prices

Seoul apartment jeonse deposits are up 8.35% this year, outpacing home prices (8.31%), which have risen for 87 straight weeks (as of Oct. 5). With citywide permit rules and smaller mortgage...

Global Stocks

US stocks are at a record. So why hasn't mine moved?

The S&P 500 closed at a record on Oct. 6, but five days earlier, as of Oct. 1, the small-cap Russell 2000 was 8.5% below its August record, and iCapital judged that most of...

Korean Stocks

Samsung's $11 billion buyback is ending. What happens to its stock?

From Aug. 20 to Sept. 10, while Samsung Electronics and SK hynix bought back their own shares, the biggest net buyer on the KOSPI was "other corporations" (KRW 23.384 trillion, about $17.5 billion, mostly the two companies'...

Crypto

Thailand opens Bitcoin ETFs next week. Why is Korea still waiting?

Korea has 11.13 million active crypto exchange accounts but no Bitcoin ETF. That's because the Capital Markets Act leaves crypto off the list of assets an ETF can hold, and the...

Investing 101

In the same sell-off, why Ethereum saw bigger liquidations than Bitcoin

In the 24 hours to Oct. 9, $356 million of Ether bets were liquidated, more than Bitcoin's $298 million even though Bitcoin is more than five times bigger. The size of the drop is...

Crypto

Why did $86 million vanish from the "safest" crypto wallet?

Crypto wallet maker Ledger told buyers who got devices in the last 90 days from CryptoBilis, an official reseller in Southeast Asia, not to start setting them up, and blockchain...

Real Estate

Why did Korea's fixed mortgage rates rise more than the Bank of Korea's hikes?

Korea's fixed mortgage rate rose 0.91 percentage points, from 3.97% last October to 4.88% this August, nearly twice the base-rate increase over the same period (0.50 points). Fixed rates track what...

Investing 101

France can collect taxes. So why does it pay more to borrow than many French companies?

On Oct. 7, 38% of France's high-grade corporate bonds, about €215 billion ($241 billion) worth, traded at lower yields than French government bonds. It means investors trust many French companies more...

Crypto

Apple stock as a crypto token pays dividends, but your name isn't on the shareholder register

The tokens for 12 US stocks, including Apple and Nvidia, that Securitize announced on Oct. 8 are, by the company's account, issued one per real share and designed to carry dividends and voting...

Global Stocks

Why the Nasdaq fell on a report that OpenAI's sales grew

A report said OpenAI's end-of-September revenue (stretched to a full year) was about $50 billion, $20 billion below the $70 billion the market expected. But sales...