Analysts recommend stocks related to new industries and technologies for investors mulling to expand their investment portfolios this year, with the latest rally in the Seoul bourses boosted by a foreign buying spree clouding judgments.

The main keywords are electric vehicle, 5G, and content streaming services, they say. 

Among them, the EV battery market is projected to expand 30 percent annually for a decade, according to Han Byung-hwa, an analyst at Eugene Investment & Securities.

Analysts like Han say that increasing demand for EVs in both the global and local market will contribute to growth in the local EV battery market.

According to the Korea Exchange on Friday, share prices of LG Chem, an EV battery manufacturer, jumped nearly 12 percent from the beginning of the year, ranking third among listed firms in terms of market capitalization.

Hyundai Motor and its affiliate Kia Motors last week said that they had either sold or received orders for over 10,000 EVs as of Feb. 20, since the beginning of the year.

Analysts added that the commercialization of 5G network services, likely to start this month, will buoy telecom stocks such as KT, SK, and LG Telecom, while local content production firms’ expanding partnerships with dominant streaming service Netflix will bring about a new era of “hallyu.” Studio Dragon, which holds almost half of this year’s tent-pole content, is expected extend last year’s shine among such content firms this year.

“It’s impossible to imagine a life without media content now -- it’s one of the fastest --growing industries,” Samsung Securities analyst Chung Myung-ji said in a note.

By Jung Min-kyung (mkjung@heraldcorp.com)