South Korean Inflation Slowing to Target Nudges BOK Closer to Pivot

South Korea’s inflation slowed more than expected to the central bank’s target, opening the door for monetary officials to conduct a policy pivot as soon as next month if home prices also show signs of easing, Bloomberg News reported. Consumer prices advanced 2% in August from a year earlier, moderating from a 2.6% clip in July, the statistics office reported Tuesday. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had forecast the pace of price growth would ease to 2.1%. The deceleration was amplified somewhat by comparisons with last year, when price growth surged on higher energy costs.
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South Korea Sets Tight Deadline for Lenders to Clean Up Property Loans

South Korea’s financial market regulator has asked lenders with exposure to troubled real estate project finance loans to finalize their cleanup plans by Sept. 6, setting a tight deadline after growth in risky loans exceeded the regulator’s previous estimates, Bloomberg News reported. Project finance exposure of all financial institutions stood at 216.5 trillion won ($162 billion) as of June 2024, of which at least 21 trillion won, or 9.7%, was risky, the Financial Supervisory Service, the Korean financial watchdog, said on Thursday.
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Bank of Korea Holds Rate Steady, Signals Pivot to Easing Soon

South Korea’s central bank held interest rates steady but cut its inflation and growth forecasts for the year and signaled that it will pivot to easing in the coming months, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Bank of Korea on Thursday kept its benchmark seven-day repurchase rate unchanged at a 15-year high of 3.50% for a 13th consecutive time—the longest such run in the country. Twenty-four of the 27 analysts polled by The Wall Street Journal ahead of the decision had expected no rate change in August, but all forecast a rate cut in October or November. BOK Gov.
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Shunning Home Markets, South Korean Retailers Pile Up on U.S. Stocks

South Korea's mom-and-pop investors are defying last week's global financial markets rout by pouring even more funds into U.S. stocks, a years-long trend that analysts and investors bet will continue due to the depressed value proposition at home, Reuters reported. South Korean retailers have been scooping up Nvidia, Tesla Inc. and Apple shares this year fueled in part by the worldwide AI-frenzy, a move that comes despite government efforts to boost the domestic stock market.

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