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South Korean investors increasingly bet big on Apple

During the last quarter of 2019, investors in South Korea bought almost $60 million of Apple shares. In a region dominated by Samsung, this made Apple the biggest foreign company for investors.

In the last quarter, October to December 2019, investors in South Korea together bought a total of $59.3 million worth of shares in Apple stock. This is specifically South Korean investors buying new shares and does not include the existing Apple stocks that were traded locally.

Going by the new investments, The Korea Herald says that Apple grew by 86%, and outperformed all other technology shares.

Figures from the Korea Securities Depository (KSD) say that in December alone, South Korean investors bought $30.6 million worth of Apple shares. Local investors' now hold $236 million of Apple shares, as compared to $134 million a year ago.

South Korea is home to Samsung, but the The Korea Herald says that investors have been buying more American stocks in the last year. It says this is because "the Korean stock market suffered a relatively dull performance compared with the US market."

The publication also credits better than expected sales of Apple new products during the year, including the Apple Watch.



3 Comments

CloudTalkin 5 Years · 918 comments

Investors buy more of a stock that is doing better than other stocks.  Uh, okay.  Pretty sure S. Koreans invest just like Americans, Chinese, Italians, Russians... Tuvaluans, Nauruans, and investors from every other country.

baconstang 10 Years · 1161 comments

$60 million?  Not 60 million shares?  Or $60 billion?

$60M seems rather small is perspective.  That's like 0.0045% of the company.

Bart Y 6 Years · 73 comments

$60 million?  Not 60 million shares?  Or $60 billion?

$60M seems rather small is perspective.  That's like 0.0045% of the company.

That’s just in one quarter.  Take that number and project it annually, you’d get a quarter billion dollars.  Consider that $1=$1159 Korean Won, it adds up to a lot of money.  The Korean stock exchange is relatively small and a lot of Korean investor money is tied up in local Korean companies.