Overseas stock ownership among Korean investors up 60% in Q3

People work inside the dealing room of Hana Bank in central Seoul, Monday. Yonhap

Holdings of foreign securities among Korean investors in the third quarter rose nearly 60 percent from a year earlier, with U.S. stocks dominating investors' foreign portfolio, data showed Monday.

Local investors held overseas stocks and bonds worth $220.3 billion as of end-September, up 59.7 percent from the same period a year earlier, according to the data from the Korea Securities Depository (KSD).

The value of U.S. stocks and bonds held by Korean investors totaled $177.6 billion, accounting for 80.7 percent of their total overseas securities holdings. Investments in U.S. stocks alone totaled $155.5 billion, or about 94 percent of their total overseas equity holdings.

U.S. electric vehicle titan Tesla Motors was Korean investors' top pick, with their holdings reaching $27.5 billion. Tesla was the top pick of local investors for the past three consecutive quarters.

Artificial intelligence (AI) chip giant Nvidia Corp. took the No. 2 spot with $16.3 billion, trailed by Palantir Technologies with $6.5 billion, Apple Inc. with $4.7 billion and quantum computing company IonQ Inc. with $3.7 billion.

Meanwhile, the value of overseas securities settled through the KSD stood at $200.8 billion, up 12.1 percent from the same period a year earlier and 4 percent higher than the previous quarter.