Longer won trading hours with eye on inflows

Market protection: Screens show the stock index and foreign-exchange rates in a bank’s dealing room in Seoul. The government is loosening policies that it has had in place since the Asian Financial Crisis. — AP

Seoul: South Korea will kick off a test run to extend the trading hours of its currency today to improve the market’s accessibility and ultimately attract more inflows.

The initiative is a step toward enabling investors to trade the won around the clock, and may eventually boost the case for the nation’s stocks and bonds to be added to global indexes.