Strota/ Newsroom/ Global Markets/ 2026-08-05

KOSPI jumped 1.6%

Strota Newsroom · Global Markets · session of 2026-08-05 · market close

KOSPI closed at 6,358.95 on 2026-08-04, jumped 1.6% on the session and is +50.9% year-to-date. Here is what the market data shows.

The KOSPI closed higher on 4 August 2026, finishing at 6,358.95 after a gain of 1.62% on the day. It capped a firmer week for South Korea's benchmark, which was up 5.57%.

The index nonetheless remained well below its recent peak. It sat 30.23% under its 52-week high of 9,114.55, while still standing 103.16% above its 52-week low of 3,130.09. It traded below its 50-day moving average of 7,705.17 — the average closing level of the past fifty sessions — but above its 200-day average of 5,761.5. Over one month it was down 21.38% and over three months down 3.64%, while holding a 50.89% gain for the year to date.

The peer markets in the evidence pack do not all share a single trading day, and the dates matter. Among the Asian markets whose latest close also falls on 4 August, the KOSPI's rise was the biggest: the Nikkei added 0.32%, Shanghai 0.33% and the ASX 200 1.4%, while the Hang Seng fell 0.6% and Taiwan's TAIEX slipped 0.06%. The US, European and Indian figures carry the date 5 August — a later trading day, not the same session. On that date the Dow rose 0.75% while the S&P 500 eased 0.14% and the Nasdaq lost 0.64%. The FTSE 100 added 0.08% and the CAC 40 0.03%, against declines of 0.29% for the DAX and 0.15% for the Euro Stoxx 50. India's Sensex gained 0.19% and the Nifty 50 0.04%.

The news in the pack speaks to the market's temperament rather than this session. A report from wsj.com five days earlier described the Kospi logging a record daily gain despite efforts to tame its swings; the Financial Times reported four days ago that the market had soared 18% as investors moved back into AI names; and Fortune, three days ago, reported anger among retail investors after a rout. An item from Chosun Ilbo, filed four hours before the pack, reported a jump of 3.76% on broad large-cap strength — larger than the 1.62% recorded for 4 August, so the two describe different sessions.

Headlines from Bloomberg.com and Coinpedia both framed the index's volatility as having overtaken bitcoin's, and the New York Times likened the AI-driven market to a "version of Squid Game". Business Insider reported that Goldman had described the selloff in Korean AI stocks as overdone.

The pack attaches no data release, policy step or company result to the 1.62% gain, so it does not establish a driver for the day. What it records instead is an index pulling two ways at once: up 50.89% this year, down 21.38% over the past month, and 30.23% short of its 52-week high.

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Around the world (same session)

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How this article was made: Strota assembled the market data above (the index's price history, same-session peer-market moves and public headlines) and an AI model wrote the narrative strictly from that evidence — it is not permitted to add outside facts or numbers. Every figure comes from the underlying market/public data.