Korea Securities Depository announced on May 6 that South Korean individual investors bought and sold American stocks worth US$579.08 million on daily average on April 30, May 1 and May 4, the three trading days in the recent holiday period. The value is 13.5 percent more than last month’s daily average.
During the period, they concentrated on buying rather than selling. Specifically, the average daily selling was US$238.13 million whereas the average daily buying was US$340.95 million. They bought more than US$74 million of Hasbro shares, US$52.98 million of Tesla, US$50.55 million of Microsoft and US$36.18 million of Apple. Meanwhile, they reduced their ETF purchase.
The active trading during the period was because more and more investors are getting interested in foreign stocks and mobile trading systems have facilitated cross-border stock trading.
According to Korea Investment & Securities, that type of trading based on its mobile trading system increased 14-fold and 21-fold year on year for the first four months of this year and the holiday period, respectively.