Foreign investors sold a net $14.16 billion of Korean stocks in September, 354 times August's net buying

The Bank of Korea's explanations are its own inference from a net figure. A fund cutting chipmakers on AI doubts and a fund cutting everything on yields add up to the same $14.16 billion ^[1], and Yonhap News Agency's added backdrop of rising bond yields ^[8] is a third candidate that the Bank of Korea's wording does not rank.

The 354 in the headline compares two flows ^[12], and the smaller one is close to zero: August's $40 million ^[2] is 0.28% of September's total ^[11]. Foreigners had been net sellers of local stocks since January before that month ^[3]. We would call August a pause.

Foreigners sold $5.81 billion of local bonds in September ^[5], which is $1.28 billion, or 28%, more than August's $4.53 billion ^[9] (a month when stocks drew $40 million of net buying ^[2]). Stocks and bonds together lost about $20 billion in September ^[13].

The won ended September at 1,352.8 per dollar against 1,368.6 a month earlier ^[7], a drop of 15.8 won in the dollar rate, or 1.15% ^[10], in a month when about $20 billion left stocks and bonds ^[13]. The sources do not say what offset the outflow, and two month-end readings cannot show the path between them.

Two other readings are open. One is that August began a recovery that September's Middle East and AI worries interrupted, which predicts net buying returning in October. The other is that September was a one-off and October's stock figure shrinks toward August's. In our view a single month of $40 million supports neither, and on these numbers foreign investors are not adding Korean equity exposure at any scale. Net stock buying in October well above August's $40 million would prove that wrong.