Foreign investors’ selloff caused South Korean stocks to fall below 7,000 points, with sharp surges and crashes occurring frequently—35 times in the year to date, triggering the “sidecar” mechanism.

BlockBeats message: On July 13, according to a report by South Korean media, the intraday Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) briefly fell below the 7,000-point mark, triggering this year’s seventh circuit breaker mechanism. With geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and Iran flaring up again, foreign investors and institutional investors massively sold stocks, causing the index to fall sharply. This is the first time in nearly two months since May 4 that KOSPI has fallen below 7,000 points during trading.

Data show that foreign investors and institutional investors led the selloff. Foreign investors net sold 2.23 trillion won, while institutional investors net sold about 570 billion won, while retail investors net bought nearly 2.7 trillion won. Among institutional investors, the National Pension Fund net bought about 220 billion won. Recently, the Korean stock market has been roiling, sometimes surging and sometimes plunging.

In today’s morning session, the sell side once triggered this year’s 18th “pause automated trading mechanism” (sidecar mechanism). In the afternoon, it even initiated the circuit breaker mechanism. Since the beginning of this year, the Korean stock market has recorded a total of 35 “sidecar” operations triggered by the buy side and the sell side—17 triggered by the buy side and 18 triggered by the sell side.