Stock market rally continues

Local stocks rallied to a new record-high Tuesday, bucking the downtrend across the region, on good local macroeconomic outlook for 2013.

Overcoming rough trading early in the session, the main-share Philippine Stock Exchange index added 34.51 points or 0.54 percent to a new all-time high of 6,470.49. This marked the 15th record finish for this year and the 76th since President Aquino assumed office in mid-2010.

Dealers said the Philippine growth story was attracting new investors despite a still cautious global outlook for 2013. A benign inflation rate of 3 percent in January also affirmed the soundness of the country’s economic fundamentals. At the same time, historically low interest rates are encouraging investors to seek better yields in equities.

John Sturmey, Religare global head of equity capital markets based in Singapore, said yesterday that there was a good chance that the Philippine Stock Exchange index could rise by another 20-25 percent this year. “Every single fund we talk to, they want to look at the Philippines,” he said.

The local stock market has been rising for the third consecutive day. The index is now nearing the 6,500 mark that President Aquino recently cited as wishful thinking for his birthday on Feb. 8.

Most counters firmed up yesterday except for property (-0.51 percent). The biggest gainer was services (+1.03 percent). Value turnover for the day amounted to P9.57 billion. There were 87 advancers that narrowly edged out 84 decliners.

The day’s biggest index gainers were AGI (+3.54 percent), SMDC (+2.99 percent) and ICTSI (+2.33 percent) while BPI, Petron, SMIC, BDO, Philex, PLDT and AEV also contributed large gains to the PSEi.

On the other hand, investors pocketed gains from Megaworld (-3.71 percent), Metrobank (-1.3 percent), ALI (-0.33 percent), SM Prime (-0.77 percent) and DMCI

(-1.82 percent).

Outside of index stocks, Puregold and Bloomberry also fell on profit-taking. Doris C. Dumlao