Last month, foreign investors made a net purchase of 344 billion won worth of domestic listed stocks (where purchases exceeded sales), marking their first net buying activity in eight months.
According to the 'August 2026 Foreign Securities Investment Trends' released by the Financial Supervisory Service on the 18th, foreign investors made a net purchase of 1.888 trillion won worth in KOSPI and a net sale of 1.545 trillion won worth in KOSDAQ, resulting in a total net purchase of 344 billion won.
Foreign investors returning to net buying comes after eight months. From January through July, foreign investors sold domestic stocks worth 195 trillion won over seven consecutive months. The scale of foreign net sales this year was as follows: △the 98 billion won △the 19.558 trillion won △the 43.505 trillion won △the 4.46 trillion won △the 47.19 trillion won △the 49.336 trillion won △July 31.644 trillion won. Due to the outbreak of the Middle East war at the end of February, net selling continued, reaching a record high in June.
This improvement in foreign capital flows is attributed to renewed investment sentiment toward semiconductors following strong earnings reports from big tech companies like Microsoft and Amazon on July 31, which saw KOSPI surge nearly 18% compared to the previous day, and further boosted by OpenAI's unveiling of its next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) Astra, pushing KOSPI above 7000 (on September 9).
As of the end of last month, foreign holdings of domestic stocks totaled 2,280.6 trillion won, accounting for 34.8% of market capitalization. By country, holdings were: United States 999.7 trillion won (43%), Europe 676.9 trillion won (29%), Asia 312.8 trillion won (13%), and the Middle East 44.1 trillion won (2%).
Foreign investors also switched to net buying in bonds for the first time in five months. They made a net sale of 3.935 trillion won worth of listed bonds and received 801 billion won from bond maturities, resulting in a total net inflow of 4.736 trillion won.
By remaining maturity, foreign investors made net purchases in bonds with maturities of five years or more, while they made net sales in bonds with maturities under one year and those between one to less than five years. As of the end of last month, foreign holdings of listed bonds totaled 330.3 trillion won, representing 11% of total outstanding amounts.
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