"Mask Removal Soon"... Foreigners Lead Two Consecutive Weeks of Net Buying in KOSDAQ Listed Companies

Yoon Seok-yeol, the presidential candidate of the People Power Party, is taking off his mask to speak at the 'Small and Medium Business Policy Vision Presentation' event held on the 14th at the Korea Federation of SMEs in Yeouido, Seoul. Photo by Yoon Dong-ju doso7@

[Asia Economy Reporter Ji Yeon-jin] Foreign investors recorded net purchases in the domestic stock market for two consecutive weeks. In particular, while foreign investors net sold nearly 1 trillion KRW in the KOSPI market last week, they net bought 880 billion KRW worth in the KOSDAQ market.

According to the Korea Exchange on the 3rd, foreign investors recorded net purchases worth approximately 78 billion KRW in the domestic stock market from the 28th of last month to the 1st of this month. They recorded net sales of 910.1 billion KRW in the KOSPI market, while net buying 881.3 billion KRW worth in the KOSDAQ market.

During this period, foreign investors purchased 668.4 billion KRW worth of Classys, a KOSDAQ-listed company, marking the largest net purchase (668.9 billion KRW) in the entire stock market. LG Energy Solution (109.9 billion KRW), L&F (109.2 billion KRW), S-Oil (67.1 billion KRW), and KT (57.1 billion KRW) also ranked high in net purchases.

Classys is a skin beauty medical device company that was re-listed through a merger with the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) KTis SPAC 2. With the global COVID-19 pandemic having passed its peak and the number of domestic COVID-19 cases entering a downward trend since last week, reopening expectations are believed to have boosted Classys’ stock price. The end of COVID-19 and the removal of masks could significantly increase sales of skin beauty devices.

Seogeunhee, a researcher at Samsung Securities, said, “The mask-wearing mandate is being lifted in major countries such as Germany, France, and the United States. This means that the need for appearance management, which has been suppressed for two years, will emerge,” and judged that the reopening trend is an unstoppable major trend.

On the other hand, foreign investors net sold the most Samsung Electronics shares last week, offloading 1.0573 trillion KRW worth. This was followed by SK Hynix (-322.5 billion KRW), Samsung Electronics Preferred (-166.4 billion KRW), POSCO Holdings (-106.3 billion KRW), and HMM (-68.1 billion KRW) in order of net sales scale.