HMC Investment Securities, a brokerage subsidiary of Korea’s largest automaker Hyundai Motor, made the worst equity forecast for 2013, projecting late last year that the benchmark KOSPI would reach over 2,500 points, according to industry data.

KDB Daewoo Securities had the lowest KOSPI projection with 1,750.

Nineteen domestic brokerage houses, including HMC Investment, missed the mark by being overly optimistic without taking the unavoidable U.S. monetary stimulus cuts and Japan’s fiscal and monetary stimulus into account.

The range of KOSPI forecasts by the 19 was between 2,150 and 2,554. The benchmark index, however, barely managed to stay above the 2,000 threshold over the year due to volatility stemming from risks and concerns over the U.S. quantitative easing.

Japan’s weak yen, achieved through unorthodox monetary policy, also affected investor confidence over the Korean economy as the deprecation of the yen would affect price competitiveness of Korean goods overseas.

These two factors led the Korean stock market to record the lowest among the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in terms of growth this year, according to the Korea Center for International Finance.

Korean stocks lost 0.7 percent on average as of Dec. 20, putting the country 30th out of 34 OECD members. Chile, Turkey, Czech Republic and Mexico, whose stock markets performed in negative territory, followed Korea.

The KOSPI hit its lowest at 1,780.63 on June 25 this year.

The last day of equity trading this year will be on Monday. The stock market will open again at 10 a.m. on Jan. 2, in 2014, the Korea Exchange noted.

By Park Hyong-ki (hkp@heraldcorp.com)