KOSPI May Spin Its Wheels On Thursday

(RTTNews) - The South Korea stock market has finished higher in back-to-back sessions, advancing more than 280 points or 4 percent along the way. The KOSPI now sits just beneath the 6,800-point plateau although it may run out of steam on Thursday.

The global forecast for the Asian markets is mixed to lower on surging crude oil prices and concerns over the Middle East conflict. The European markets were up and the U.S. bourses were down and the Asian markets figure to follow the latter lead.

The KOSPI finished modestly higher on Wednesday following gains from the technology stocks and the automobile producers.

For the day, the index improved 49.75 points or 0.74 percent to finish at 6,797.70 after peaking at 7,166.00. Volume was 368.7 million shares worth 28.1 trillion won. There were 467 gainers and 398 decliners.

The lead from Wall Street is soft as the major averages opened lower on Wednesday and bounced up and down throughout the session before ending slightly lower.

The Dow eased 6.06 points or 0.01 percent to finish at 52,218.58, while the NASDAQ slumped 146.30 points or 0.57 percent to end at 25,690.90 and the S&P 500 fell 10.24 points or 0.14 percent to close at 7,498.96.

The choppy trading on Wall Street came as traders seemed reluctant to make significant moves ahead of the release of some key earnings news from tech giants Alphabet (GOOGL), Tesla (TSLA) and IBM Corp. (IBM).

Traders attempted to shrug off an extended rally by the price of crude oil, with U.S. crude oil futures spiking to their highest levels in over a month amid concerns about the escalating conflict between the U.S. and Iran.

Crude oil prices jumped again on Wednesday on supply disruption concerns as the conflict between the U.S. and Iran shows no sings of letting up. West Texas Intermediate crude for September delivery was up $2.62 or 3.11 percent at $86.96 per barrel.