Local markets down on profit-taking

MANILA -- The Philippine Stock Exchange index (PSEi) ended Monday in the red due to sustained profit-taking, which also affected the local currency.

The PSEi slipped to 7,908.99 points, down 1.02 percent or 81.21 points, which Regina Capital Managing Director Luis Limlingan traced to “continued profit taking ahead of some important events towards the end of the week.”

He was referring to the two-day meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) that will start Tuesday and the rate setting meet of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’ (BSP) policy-making Monetary Board (MB) on Thursday, among others events that investors are eagerly awaiting.

He noted that the slide in US stocks last week was carried over this week.

With these, All Shares also declined by 0.86 percent or 42.19 points, to 4,842.72 points.

Services posted the highest contraction among the sectoral gauges with a drop of 1.42 points and was followed by Industrial, 1.19 percent; Financials, 1.10 percent; Property, 0.88 percent; Holding Firms, 0.64 percent; and Mining and Oil, 0.27 percent.

Volume remains thin at 663.6 million shares amounting to PHP5 billion.

Losers led gainers at 136 to 70 while 43 shares were unchanged.

Also, the local currency ended the week’s first trading day at 52.145 from 52.02 Friday last week, which a trader pointed to the negative close of the main equities gauge.

It opened the day at 52.05, a drop from the 51.9 start in the previous session.

It traded between 52.21 and 52.04, resulting in an average of 52.124.

Volume reached USD955.73 million, higher than the USD870.39 million at the end of last week.

The currency pair is seen to trade between 52.00 and 52.20 Tuesday. (PNA)