South Korean stock market data, increasing global market investment attention, accelerated shift in sources of returns

With growing domestic and international attention on China’s domestic stock market, stock market data services—once viewed as an auxiliary offering—are clearly showing a trend of shifting into principal business revenue. Market information such as real-time quotes or historical trading records is now not merely simple reference material, but has become core assets used by overseas institutions for analysis and algorithmic trading. Both exchanges and alternative trading platforms are accelerating the expansion of related businesses.

According to a report from the financial investment industry, Nextrade plans to switch the market data it has provided for free up to now to a paid model starting March 2027. Since it was established in March 2026, Nextrade has kept the data free and has focused on market stability and building up users. Now, the company believes it has developed a certain scale of demand and is preparing to move to a paid system. The company has already signed data supply contracts with major market information providers in both China and overseas, with overseas companies accounting for about one-third. It is reported that the applicable fee rate will be about half that of the Korean exchanges. After the paid model begins, data business revenue could account for 10% to 20% of Nextrade’s total revenue. The company is also reorganizing its internal accounting procedures, which is seen as preparation for this transition.

Korean exchanges are also adjusting their data business framework as demand from overseas investors continues to expand. This March, the exchange raised the prices of historical data that provide past market information. Historical data is a product that packages and supplies past records from specific periods—such as transaction prices, trading volumes, and bid/ask quotes—mainly used to verify investment strategies or build automated trading models. The financial investment industry believes this adjustment is, in fact, the first price increase since the related commercial sales officially started in 2017, with the increase reportedly around 30% to 40%. Actual revenue has also risen quickly. According to exchange data, revenue from this segment increased from 1.9 billion won in 2024 to 4.2 billion won in 2025, a 121% increase in one year. Considering that overseas clients accounted for as much as 94% by the end of 2025, it can be said that the demand center for domestic stock market data has effectively shifted overseas.

This shift is closely tied to the investment appeal of Korea’s stock market. Last year, the KOSPI index recorded relatively high returns among major national stock indices, drawing more attention from overseas institutional investors. Naturally, the demand for data needed to analyze the Korean market has also increased accordingly. Especially for hedge funds, asset management firms, and information providers, what they need is data that is larger in scale and more sophisticated than simple quotes. To meet this need, Korean exchanges are introducing cloud-based infrastructure to improve the speed and stability of data transmission. In the past, there were methods of delivering large volumes of data stored on portable storage devices such as U盘; now, with cloud technology, faster and more consistent services can be provided. In addition, the exchange is expanding standard products and subscription models that reflect customer needs. For customers who require receiving data daily, the exchange has built a system that automatically provides large-capacity materials such as market bid/ask quotes and trade information, indicating that data business is shifting from one-time sales to ongoing services.

Real-time data business—an exchange core area—also maintains strong growth momentum. Real-time data revenue in cooperation with Koscom reached 98.1 billion won in 2025, up 3.8% from 94.5 billion won in 2024. Overseas clients make up about 48%, which is lower than historical data but still close to half. Going forward, the exchange will place greater emphasis on expanding overseas clients and is improving its efforts centered on the Information Data Market (KDM) to make it easier for foreign users to access. Meanwhile, the exchange is also researching new data products based on disclosed information. The exchange plans to introduce XBRL-based disclosed information into the listing disclosure system next year—work that converts corporate disclosure information into a machine-readable standard format. This will make automatic analysis of corporate performance and financial information easier, and may in the future lead to new paid data products. This trend is very likely to guide Korea’s capital market data to transform from a mere auxiliary service into an independent source of revenue.