It's been a steady ride up the escalator and now it's straight down the escalator as the Korean Kospi has fallen as much as 10%.
What a chart.
Korea has been a red-hot market for the past year and was up 40% year-to-date at one point this year but this is a big drop.
The whole tone of global markets continues to worsen and S&P 500 futures are down 0.7%.
It's not a good look throughout global markets with the Nikkei also down 4.2% but what's interesting is that the FX market is taking this all in stride. The dollar is largely unchanged across the board and the yen is only modestly stronger.
Some selling has crept into AUD (counterintutively) after the strong GDP number but CAD and NZD are basically unchanged so far on the day. The euro is down just 10 pips against the US dollar.
In bond markets, there also isn't any real concerning price action with Treasury yields up 0.5 bps across the curve and 10-year JGBs down 2 bps.
I'm not sure how to take that signal but I tend to think the best steer comes from bonds and FX. There is clearly some de-grossing and profit taking. Those who were lucky enough to be sitting on huge gains in Korean stocks can't be blamed for taking some off the table and I think that's all this is.
