On the 16th, a board in the Hana Bank dealing room in Jung District, Seoul displays KOSPI and other indexes. KOSPI opens at 6,960.50, down 323.91 points (4.45%) from the previous session, and the KOSDAQ index opens at 813.32, down 16.11 points (1.94%). /Courtesy of Yonhap News

As the KOSPI index plunged more than 5% in early trading on the 16th, the Korea Exchange (KRX) triggered a sell-sidecar (temporary suspension of program sell orders). The KOSPI index opened with the 7,000 level breaking down.

The exchange triggered a sell-sidecar on the stock market at 9:10 a.m. that day. Through that day, the stock market had seen sell-sidecars triggered 19 times and buy-sidecars 18 times.

A sell-sidecar is a market stabilization mechanism that is triggered when the KOSPI 200 futures price remains down 5% or more from the reference price for at least one minute.

At the time of activation, the KOSPI 200 futures index was at 1,104.40 points, down 5.22% from the reference price of 1,165.32 points. Program trading volume reached 188.3 billion won.

This month, the domestic stock market has continued extreme volatility. The previous day, buy-sidecars were triggered on the stock market and the KOSDAQ market, but a day later sell-sidecars were triggered.

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