Stocks down as investors cash in

PROFIT- TAKING weighed on the stock market on Wednesday with benchmark Philippine Stock Exchange index down 0.78 percent or 66.01 points to close at 8,431.73.

A day after breaking the 8,500 resistance level, the market again retested that by rising to 8,548.58 but then tumbled to as low as 8,332.30 before slightly recovering.

The wider All Shares dropped 0.69 percent or 34.07 points to finish at 4,924.46.

“The market, even if it’s on an uptrend, will not go straight up, so this sequence of ebbs along [ with] the rising tide may be expected,” AP Securities, Inc. trader Gerard Barboza said.

“Investors may take some of these declines, though, as opportunities for buying strong blues ( blue chips) that are correcting,” he added.

COL Financial research head April Lynne Tan said the market had made “a technical correction after going up substantially the past few weeks.”

A Regina Capital Development Corp. official said technical indicators were already showing weaknesses, “so expect profit- taking in the local bourse.”

“A downtrend within the week is possible as MACD ( moving average convergence divergence) points downwards and DMIs ( directional movement index) start to converge. The flat ADX ( average directional index) reflects that the previous bullish trend is not strong enough to sustain trading above 8,500,” he said.

The market broke past 8,500 on Tuesday, hitting a record intraday high of 8,586.73, as investors cheered President Rodrigo Duterte’s declaration that Marawi City had been “liberated” following five months of conflict.

Wednesday’s profit- taking pulled down all sub- indices, with mining and oil down the most by 3.17 percent.

Over 1.3 billion shares valued at P9.26 billion were traded.

Losers led winners, 138 to 72, while 35 issues were unchanged.