[Digital Today reporter Sangyeop Oh (오상엽)] The Korea Exchange's stock market division triggered a program sell sidecar at 10:23:41 a.m. on July 7.
A sell sidecar on the stock market is a mechanism that suspends the validity of program trading buy or sell orders for 5 minutes when the most-traded near-month futures contract based on the KOSPI200 falls at least 5 percent and the drop persists for 1 minute.
The futures contract was at 1,227.32 points, down 66.26 points, or 5.12 percent, from the reference price of 1,293.58 points.
South Korean stocks open lower and extend losses despite Samsung Electronics' announcement of record second-quarter operating profit.
Samsung Electronics said its preliminary second-quarter operating profit rose 1,810 percent from a year earlier to 8.94 trillion won. That exceeds the market forecast of 8.42 trillion won.
Samsung Electronics posted second-quarter revenue of 171 trillion won. Both revenue and operating profit notched record results for a third consecutive quarter since the fourth quarter of last year.
Sangyeop Oh
yub@d-today.co.kr