The trade volume of lump sum retail orders on South Korea’s secondary bourse Kosdaq surged this year on the back of growing demand for biopharmaceuticals, data showed Wednesday.

According to the country’s stock operator Korea Exchange, the number of individual purchasers’ orders amounting to 100 million won ($90,000) or more at a time totaled 12,499 as of the end of August, up 161.21 percent from the same period last year.

Purchases of more than 10,000 shares also moved up 15.5 percent, while the total number of orders climbed 36.8 percent from a year earlier.

The investors’ choices were mostly focused on local bio firms, with ViroMed topping the list, followed by SillaJen, Celltrion Healthcare and HLB.

 

The main bourse Kospi also saw a visible rise in its trade volume during the cited period, especially concerning key biopharmaceutical players such as Celltrion and Samsung Biologics, data showed. The number of purchases worth 100 million won or more stood at 16,283 as of end-August, up 72.34 percent from a year earlier.

But the buying of mass stocks of more than 10,000 shares at a time grew only 1.53 percent to 19,963 cases during the corresponding period, showing that individuals in the main bourse preferred high-cap stocks over lower-valued ones, according to the KRX.

By Bae Hyun-jung (tellme@heraldcorp.com)