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Photo courtesy of Yonhap News |
[Alpha Biz= Paul Lee] The alternative trading platform NexTrade (NXT) has seen a significant decline in market share, following SK Hynix’s designation as an investment warning stock and the Korea Exchange’s (KRX) recent fee reductions.
According to the KRX, NexTrade’s average daily trading value for the week of December 15–19 fell to KRW 56.719 trillion, down 28.3% from the previous week’s KRW 79.085 trillion. Average daily trading volume also decreased 5.7%, from 1.4262 trillion shares to 1.345 trillion shares.
SK Hynix, the second-largest domestic company by market capitalization, was classified as an investment warning stock on December 11. This designation restricts margin and credit trading and limits transactions through alternative exchanges, contributing to the drop in NexTrade trading. Following the designation, NexTrade’s daily trading value dropped to KRW 68.286 trillion on December 11 and further to KRW 50.406 trillion on December 17.
Meanwhile, overall domestic stock market volume and trading value—including both KRX and NexTrade—continued to rise. Average daily trading volume increased 23.6% to 15.4333 trillion shares, and trading value grew 1.3% to KRW 33.584 trillion.
Another factor is KRX’s fee reduction, implemented on December 15 through a tiered rate system, lowering fees by 20–40% until February 13, 2026. Under the Smart Order Routing (SOR) system, brokerage firms automatically direct orders to the exchange offering the best combination of price and fees. Previously, NexTrade benefited from lower fees, but the KRX cuts have shifted this flow back toward KRX.
Following the fee changes, NexTrade’s pre-market (8:00–8:50 a.m.) and after-market (3:40–8:00 p.m.) trading accounted for an average of 39.6% of its daily trading value, up 6.3 percentage points from the previous week. This indicates a contraction in NexTrade’s main market (9:00 a.m.–3:20 p.m.), which overlaps with KRX’s regular trading hours.
Alphabiz Reporter Kim Jisun(stockmk2020@alphabiz.co.kr)
