South Korea's bourse operator triggered a sell-side "sidecar" trading halt early Thursday as the benchmark KOSPI index plunged nearly 8%, tracking a tech-led selloff on Wall Street, where sticky US inflation data fuelled more rate-hike bets.
The automatic five-minute suspension on program sell orders was triggered after steep losses in index futures, an abrupt cooling mechanism, as the KOSPI was set for its seventh straight session of losses, its longest losing streak since September 2024.
