Stocks sustain runup to record highs

The stock market’s run towards record-high levels continued yesterday, finishing its first week of the new year on a high note.

The Philippine Stock Ex- change index (PSEi) closed yesterday at a new record high of 8,770, 0.34 percent or 30.17 points higher than Thursday’s close, extending its winning streak to eight since the last week of 2017.

The PSEi also breached the 8,800 level mid-day, reaching a high of 8,858.07.

“So far we’ve started off the year on a very high note. Investors have remained optimistic and there has been no negativity arising so far. Everyone’s looking forward to a better year with the TRAIN and a lot of hopes have been pinned on the Build Build Build rollout. Investors are just looking at the new hope that the new year brings to everyone,” Philstocks Financial Inc. head of research Justino Calaycay said.

“Even overseas markets are on record levels. So there’s a general flow of optimism globally and we’re just participating in that process. Until something negative emerges, we will probably continue moving on even higher in the coming weeks,” Calaycay said.

US stocks posted its third consecutive day of gains on Thursday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average closing above the 25,000 mark for the first time in history.

The S&P 500 closed at 2,723.99 and Nasdaq Composite at 7,077.92, both record highs.

“The recent inflation data proved little to hamper the buying momentum as the CPI for December was 3.3 percent, in-line with the median estimate. Full year came out at 3.2 percent,” Regina Capital Development Corp.’s Luis Limlingan said.

Locally, counters were mostly positive except for services which declined 0.72 percent.