About 70% Growth from Previous Quarter
The amount of Korean investors' investment in foreign securities reached a new high in the first quarter of 2020.
The settlement amount of foreign currency securities by Korean investors stood at US$66.586 billion in the first quarter, said the Korea Securities Depository on April 16. This was an increase of 68.2 percent from the previous quarter (US$39.57 billion). Payments for foreign currency stocks (US$ 27.48 billion) inflated 162.9 percent, and payments for foreign currency bonds (US$391.3 billion) climbed 34.3 percent.
Payments for stocks in the Euro market touched US$ 3.37 billion, representing the highest proportion of 49.9 percent of the total.
The Euro market was followed by the United States (US$29.75 billion), Hong Kong (US$2.52 billion), China (US$980 million), and Japan (US$540 million).
It was Tesla stocks (US$ 1.47 billion) in the United States that Korean investors purchased most. The amount of Tesla stocks purchased by Koreans rose 764.7 percent from the previous quarter. Tesla was followed by large U.S. tech giants including Apple (US$1.15 billion), Microsoft (US$1.6 billion), Amazon (US$1.5 billion), and Alphabet A (US$59 million).