Seoul bourse expected to gain ground next week

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SEOUL: South Korea’s stock market is expected to continue its upward movement next week as worries over the Greek debt crisis were eased and investors’ outlooks for major economies could improve, analysts said Saturday.

The country’s key stock index, the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), gained 1.67 per cent, or 34.93 points, to close at 2,125.74 on Friday, reports Yonhap news agency.

The bourse got off to a week start due to worries over sovereign debt in Greece and fluctuated sharply due to dimmed prospects of economic recovery in the United States.

But the Greek parliament approved a reform plan on Thursday to relieve the debt woes across the globe, leading to the bullish rally on the last session of the week.

Better-than-expected Chicago PMI results and a gain in the leading economic composite index also raised hopes that future economic data will be bright, analysts said.

For the next week, the analysts said, the United States Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing index, which rose to 55.3 percent in June from 53.5 percent in May, will push up the Korean stock market.

US stocks gained on Friday for the fifth session in a row, with the blue-chip Dow Jones industrial average rising 5.4 percent to close at 12,582.77.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite index also jumped 6.2 percent to 2816.03.

As earnings season starts next week, estimates on Samsung Electronics’s second-quarter earnings slated for Thursday would be the main focus of the week.

“Announcements of secondquarter earnings next week will likely serve as a boon to the market,” said Oh Hyun-seok, an analyst from Samsung Securities Co Ltd.

“Tech and energy shares have already declined on concerns that their second-quarter earnings may fall short of market expectations, but automobile and financial shares are expected to gain ground on expectations of better earnings,” Oh said. — Bernama