PSEi touches 6,500 mark

Local stocks started the first trading day of the Year of the Water Snake with a bang, allowing the main index to touch 6,500 for the first time, before retreating at the close.

The main-share Philippine Stock Exchange index ended 0.66 point or 0.01-percent lower at 6,458.01 after hitting a new record intra-day peak of 6,500.08.

“Now, we cannot discount the fact that the market may either pause or do a slight pullback, say close to 6,200 (-4.6 percent) or a bear-case scenario close to the psychological support at 6,000 (-7.7 percent),” said DA Market Securities in its research note issued on Monday.

The PSEi has risen three times since bottoming out in 2008 during the US-epicentered global financial crisis.

“To give a rough guide to market cycles, crises have happened every 10 years—1987, 1997, 2007. Could the next one still be in 2017? While that definitely necessitates further discussion, it is important to note that like in the 1997 Asian Crisis, the Philippines learned from the 2007 global financial crises, and is even stronger today,” the research said.

Services and property weighed down the main index while the financial, industry, holding firms and mining/oil counters eked out modest gains.

Value turnover was muted at P5.88 billion as many investors and Asian stock markets were on a holiday break due to the Lunar Year turnover.

Despite the main index decline, there were 83 advancers that narrowly edged out 81 decliners while 48 stocks were unchanged.

Investors sold down shares of AC, AGI, Globe, BPI, ALI, Metrobank, DMCI, Petron, PLDT, MPI and Jollibee.  Among non-index stocks that gained sharply in heavy trade were NiHao (+4.21 percent) and Coal Asia (+16.48 percent). Coal Asia announced the acceleration of its coal mine production to October this year from the original target of January 2014. Doris C. Dumlao