Overseas stock settlement by Koreans at record high of $128 bn in Q1

The turnover in overseas stock trade settled by South Korean nationals in the first quarter nearly doubled on year at $128.51 billion, Korea Securities Depository said on Wednesday as retail stock fad spilled over to overseas equities.

The figure is the largest quarterly amount since data tracking began in 2011.

The settlement amounts for American stocks reached $119.89 billion in the quarter, up by 98.7 percent from three months ago and accounting for a lion¡¯s share of 93.3 percent of the total overseas stock trade turnover.

Top on the list of settlement amounts are U.S. hot stocks such as Tesla ($11.87 billion), GameStop ($5.2 billion), Apple ($3.86 billion), Churchill Capital ($2.57 billion), and Palantir Technologies ($2.18 billion).

The retention amount of overseas stocks came to $57.72 billion in the first quarter, up by 22.6 percent from $47.08 billion at the end of last year. By market, the U.S. ranked first with 46.37 billion, taking up 80.3 percent of the total retention amount. Top stocks in terms of retention amount included Tesla ($8.38 billion), Apple ($3.49 billion), Amazon ($1.58 billion), Nvidia ($1.08 billion), Alphabet ($1.04 billion), and Microsoft ($1 billion).

[¨Ï Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]