A third of Korea's listed companies drew an analyst report this year — research piles on a short list
In our archive of 6,372 single-stock broker reports in 2026, 939 of 2,819 listed companies drew at least one. The busiest name drew 100; most drew none. It measures attention, not coverage, and is not advice.
AI-assisted, human-reviewed sourcing. Figures are pulled programmatically from the official sources listed at the end of this article and checked by an editor before publication.
analystsresearchattentionbrokerskorea
Korean brokerages publish a great deal of equity research. It does not spread across the market — it stacks on a short list of names, and most of the market goes unwritten-about. We keep a daily archive of single-stock broker reports, and rolled up for 2026 it draws a clear shape.
A third drew a report; the rest drew none
Of the 2,819 listed companies we track, 939 — 33.3% — drew at least one single-stock report this year, out of 6,372 reports from 20 brokerages. The other two-thirds drew none in this archive. And “covered” is generous: the median covered company drew just two reports all year, 411 drew exactly one, and 459 were seen by a single brokerage.
At the other end, attention concentrates hard. The busiest single name drew 100 reports on its own — more than most whole sectors’ long tails combined.
The gap is a sector gap too
The share of a sector’s listed companies drawing any report runs from 24% in financials to 39.2% in information technology. Real estate sits lowest at 6.7%, on a small and holding-company-heavy base. Even the best-covered sector leaves six in ten of its listed companies unwritten-about in this sample.
What this is, and what it is not
This measures attention, not coverage of the whole market, and not quality. Two honest limits sit on it. First, the raw ticker field is filled on only a fraction of reports — a gap in our scraper, not a market fact — so we join reports to companies by name; every uncoded report still names one stock. Second, the archive is a sample of brokerages’ retail-board research. A company not appearing means it drew no report in this sample — not that no analyst covers it, and not a signal to buy or sell anything. What the numbers say plainly is narrower and still worth knowing: Korean research attention is concentrated, and most listed companies live outside it.
Data & Verification Notes
- Data as of
- Sources
- SeoulMarkets broker-research archive — Daily archive of single-stock broker reports (house, date, stock), joined to KRX names and our public-KSIC sector scheme
- Cross-checks
- In 2026 our archive holds 6,372 single-stock reports from 20 brokerages, naming 975 distinct companies; 939 of them join to the 2,819 listed companies we track — 33.3%
- The busiest name drew 100 reports; the median covered company drew 2; 411 companies drew exactly one report all year, and 459 were seen by a single brokerage
- By sector the share of listed companies drawing a report runs from 24% in financials to 39.2% in information technology, with real estate lowest at 6.7% on a small, holding-heavy base
- Excluded figures
- Any judgement of report quality, opinion or target — this counts attention, not whether it was right
- Companies that drew no report in our sample; their absence means unwritten-about in this archive, not uncovered by the market
- Reports with no single stock named (market strategy, macro, sector notes), which are not company attention
The full dataset behind these figures — every listed company, every row — is available to license. SeoulMarkets data for licence →
Not investment advice. SMarkets publishes data journalism for general information only. Nothing here is investment advice, a recommendation, or an offer to buy or sell any security — any investment you make is at your own risk and responsibility. Figures are derived from official public data sources and may be revised by the issuing agency. Verify independently before acting.
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