Red ink flows on Covid jitters
Philippine Stock Exchange index closed trading at 6,439.39, down 61.03 points or 0.94 percent
Asia markets saw big slides on Wednesday due to fears over a renewed coronavirus surge weighing on global investor sentiment and US equities deepening their retreat from last week’s record highs.
Countries around the world are urgently working to accelerate vaccination campaigns and revive their pandemic-ravaged economies, with new variants of the pathogen driving unprecedented infection numbers in some of the worst-hit nations.
Philippine stocks slipped anew as regional coronairus disease 2019 (Covid-19) cases continue to pile up around the world, Regina Capital Development Corp. managing director Luis Limlingan said.
Another round of better-than-expected earnings did little to push benchmarks up.
Equity prices retreated from recent highs amid concerns that India will impose coronavirus-related restrictions as well.
The Philippine Stock Exchange index closed trading at 6,439.39, down 61.03 points (pts) or 0.94 percent after moving between 6,439.39 to 6,494.78 on a volume of 77,099 shares worth P4.916 billion.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 256.33 pts to settle at 33,821.30. The S&P 500 declined by -0.68 percent to 4,134.94, and the Nasdaq Composite pulled back by a percent towards 13,786.27. Correspondingly, gold prices rose amid lower US Treasury yields and dollar. Spot gold edged 0.4 percent higher to $1,775.46 per ounce (/oz), nearing its multi-month high of $1,789.77. Meanwhile, the US gold futures were up by 0.3 percent to $1,775.60/oz.
Bottoming out
“Global stocks are still plumbing the lows after renewed virus concerns spooked markets overnight,” Stephen Innes of Axi Securities said.
“The surge has led to increased travel restrictions and severely dented parts of the priced to perfection reopen trade, leading to renewed concern over the continued economic impact, shrouding a batch of solid corporate results,” he added.
Tokyo led the sell-off with the Nikkei down two percent by the close after the port city of Osaka — where hospital beds for seriously ill coronavirus patients have run out — asked the central government to impose a state of emergency.
Infections there are rising just three months before the country hosts the virus-delayed Olympics, and Tokyo and several other areas are expected to follow in Osaka’s footsteps.