KOSPI

Kospi is not a Spanish word. The letter K is not frequently used in Spanish and only in foreign words, like "Kilogram" from languages like Greek that have the letter K.

"Asian stockmarkets were affected by the USA credit downgrade. There was a slip in the Nikkei of 2.2%, a drop in the Hang Seng of 3.8%, and a drop in the Kospi of 3.8%."

Samsung Electronic's ticker is listed on the KOSPI as 005930. That's the Korea Stock Exchange (Koscom).

Not what you were thinking? Samsung is not traded in the U.S. on the NYSE or AMEX. That's why you don't see a "familiar" ticker in the answer. You want a piece of that company, you'll have to get a broker to buy in for you on the Korea Stock Exchange.

The Nasdaq Composite Index - <.IXIC> closed on December 29, 2006 the day (and the year) at 2,415.29. DJI closed the same day at 12,463.15 (+ 6,4% growth 2007-2006). This year's (December 31, 2007) Nasdaq closing was 2,652.28, for a pretty decent growth 12 month of 9,8%. Data was obtained from www.reportebursatil.net, a web site inside the www.tecnologiahechapalabra.com science&technology portal, which has a simple and straightforward table showing day by day closing numbers of Hong Kong, Taipei, Tokyo, Seul, Frankfurt, Paris, London, Madrid, Europe 300 index, Santiago de Chile, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, Mexico, Caracas and the U.S.' Dow Jones Industrials and Nasdaq indexes. The table has a dropdown for selecting the desired date for the quotation. There, you can see the strongest year growth was experienced in Sao Paulo's Bovespa index, 43,8%; followed by Hong Kong's Hang Seng (39,3%) and South Korea's Kospi index (32,3%). Also impresive was the gain in Franfurt (the DAXX), 22% on the year. On the other hand, the worst performers (in reportebursatil.com table) were Tokyo (the Nikkei fell 11,1%) and Caracas, a very small bourse obviosly shaken by the economic policies present nowadays in Venezuela, causing it to show a disastrous performance of - 27,4%.