Anchor: South Korean stocks renewed their yearly low for the fourth consecutive session on Friday as investors, swayed by deep-rooted uncertainties, took their cue from Wall Street. The Korea Composite Stock Price Index, or KOSPI, broke the psychologically important 2030 barrier to threaten the 2000 mark. 
Kim In-kyung wraps up the latest on the stock market. 

Report: South Korea's main bourse tumbled for the fourth consecutive day, shedding another 36-point-15 points, or one-point-75 percent, on Friday. 

Despite an overnight recovery in U.S. stocks, which helped restore some of the week's losses on Wall Street, Amazon and Alphabet shares plunged in after hours trading. This led to another day of losses for Asian stocks. 

The benchmark Korea Composite Stock Price Index(KOSPI) ended the week at two-thousand-27-point-15 for the lowest close since January last year. During mid-day trading, the KOSPI had dipped as low as two-thousand-eight-point-72. 

The plunge was led by foreign investors, who net sold almost 178 billion won of stocks. Foreigners were net sellers for the seventh straight session. Institutions and individuals kept the index from sliding further on Friday, snapping up 103 billion won and 62 billion won of shares respectively. 

Ha Hyung-chul, a branch manager in Seoul for Yuanta Securities, attributed the recent losing streak to an imbalance in supply and demand, adding investors are taking a wait-and-see approach amid a host of uncertainties, ranging from the U.S.-China trade dispute to an expected adjustment in South Korea's benchmark interest rate. 

[Sound bite: Ha Hyung-chul - Branch manager, Yuanta Securities (Korean)]
"There are no buyers. Foreigners are taking their funds out of emerging markets. There are global variables like the U.S.-China summit on November 29th and the U.S. mid-term elections on November sixth. The Bank of Korea governor said there will be a rate hike in November." 

He also cited a reversal in U.S. and South Korean interest rates as one of the reasons for the foreign sell-off, projecting a brief dip below the 2000 threshold before rebounding after the U.S. election. 

The sputtering South Korean economy isn't helping market jitters. On Thursday, the Bank of Korea announced that the economy grew two percent in the third quarter compared to the same period last year, the slowest in nine years. Amid a continuous decline in investments, the nation is expected to face difficulty in reaching the central bank’s growth estimate of two-point-seven percent this year. 

The tech-heavy KOSDAQ wasn't spared on Friday, plummeting 23-point-77 points, or three-point-46 percent, to close at at 663-point-07. 

On the foreign exchange, the local currency weakened three-point-nine won against the dollar, ending the session at one-thousand-141-point-nine won. 

Among market heavyweights, Celltrion fell three-point-59 percent while Samsung Biologics dropped four-point-86 percent. Hyundai Motor, which reported a near 80 percent plunge in its third quarter operating profit on Thursday, retreated another one-point-82 percent. 
Kim In-kyung, KBS World Radio News.