SeoulMarkets · tag
liquidity
7 stories tagged “liquidity”, each from official Korean data with its source and timestamp.
Korea lists futures on 1,799 stocks. On one day, 333 of them traded.
One name took a third of the day's stock-futures volume. Five names took half of it; five out of six listed stock futures did not trade at all.
Six Korean retail bonds showed yields between −424 percent and +35 percent in one day's data
Among 350 bonds in KRX's general and small-lot bond markets on September 17, six posted yields no real bond earns — a byproduct of trades as small as 10,000 won face value setting the day's quoted price.
Korea's euro futures are held and not traded. Its yen futures are traded and not held.
A follow-up to our August count, on an axis it did not carry: open interest. Korea's euro book is two-thirds larger than its yen book and turns over about a fortieth as fast. Yuan open interest is 21 to 41 contracts.
Six bonds were 90% of a day's Korean bond trading
Korea's listed bond market has a price on hundreds of issues but trades almost none of them. On 2026-08-21, six bonds were 90% of all trading value, and government benchmarks were 95%. It held that way every day we measured. Not advice.
One in twenty listed Korean stocks didn't trade a single share
Korea's market is a barbell. On both days we've measured, two stocks were about half of all trading while roughly one in twenty listed issues traded nothing at all. A crowded head, a silent tail. Not advice.
KOSDAQ is 7% of the market's value but 16% of its trading
Value and trading are two different maps. KOSDAQ holds 7% of Korea's market cap yet did 16% of one day's trading — its shares turn over more than twice as fast as KOSPI's. And 137 listed companies didn't trade at all. Not advice.
Korea's provinces all borrow at the same price — the gaps are empty order books
Seventeen regional governments issue near-identical bonds. In the vintages that actually trade, the widest gap between any two provinces is 3.2 basis points — narrower than the day-to-day swing inside a single province's own bond.