It's interesting that there is a huge retail base trading KOSPI, mainly ppl who try to gamble. There's also a recent paper where the authors claim that the options market (KOSPI 200) is inefficient -don't ask me about the maths: www.wise.xmu.edu.cn/cean/download.aspx?id=342 That's only from a quick google search so take it fwiw. It also seems that the govenrment is trying to get rid of retail investors and invite more institutional western money, so maybe the inefficiency is not there anymore. Maybe someone who is actually trading those might want to comment.
Yeah. I've heard of some crazy quant strategies taht only work in Asia (because of the skew dynamics). Can you trade single names in Asia? I thought the entire market was OTC.
You definetely can trade in companies listed on the HSI, but commissions and transaction taxes are a killer there if you trade stocks frequently