KRX finds 76 suspected illegal short-selling cases over past year

Traders are seen working inside the dealing room of Hana Bank in central Seoul, March 30. Yonhap

Korea's bourse operator said Monday it had identified 76 suspected cases of illegalities in short selling in the first year since launching a real-time monitoring system and referred them to authorities for investigation.

The Korea Exchange (KRX) detected the cases through its naked short selling detection system (NSDS), introduced on March 31 last year, when the country resumed short selling in the local market, the bourse operator said.

Of them, 68.4 percent were cases valued at less than 100 million won ($65,823) each.

Under the NSDS system, an average of 15 million short-selling transactions had been monitored each day, the bourse operator said.

The total value of short-selling transactions over the past year till last Friday stood at 289.3 trillion won. Of them, 91.3 percent, or 264.2 trillion won, involved 24 financial institutions participating in the NSDS, the KRX added.

The daily average short-selling transaction value rose from approximately 170 billion won in February to around 240 billion won this month, according to the KRX.

Korea's benchmark index KOSPI experienced sharp volatility this month, plunging more than 12 percent in a single day before rebounding, amid the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.