PSE unveils new electronic board on year’s last trading day

MANILA, Philippines — As the Philippine Stock Exchange marked its 10th anniversary as a publicly listed company on Friday, it unveiled a sleek new electronic trading board as the centerpiece of the Ayala trading floor.

“As we unveil our new electronic board today, I believe that we are also unveiling a new leaf in our history beyond the dynamic visuals that the new electronic board will let us experience henceforth,” PSE chair Jose Pardo said is his welcome remarks at the bell ringing ceremony for the listing anniversary. “Given the pace of progress and development of markets globally, I am sure the next 10 years will fly by us even faster. But I am confident that we shall also be able to achieve more in the coming years.”

The electronic board is composed of 130 LED panels covering close to 80 square meters of display. It gives a preview of the stock market indices and shows real time intraday graphs and pie charts of the sectors. It features the most actively traded stocks by value and the top 10 gainers and losers. The new electronic board also has interactive display of US and Asian Markets, currency updates and has video-playing capability.

Pardo led the unveiling of the new trading board alongside PSE president Hans Sicat. The event was graced by Securities and Exchange Commission chair Teresita Herbosa.

In his speech, the PSE chairman said: “2014 presents a whole new world of exciting opportunities for the PSE and the stock market. We shall continue to roll-out our programs under our three-year strategic plan. We shall again work closely with all key stakeholders and our regulators to push for the launching of the first Personal Equity Retirement Account under the PERA Law as well as the short selling program of the PSE.”

“We will start establishing the building blocks that will lead to the introduction of our own index options and futures to be traded at the PSE. Of course, we will continue to promote and conduct market awareness activities on the products we introduced this year such as the Exchange Traded Fund, Shariah list, the PSETradex and the PSE EDGE,” said.

The PSE listed by way of introduction in December 2003.

Trading participants welcomed the unveiling of the new trading board.

“I think it’s a very remarkable improvement (from the previous board). You have all the information you need at a glance,” said Ramon Garcia, president of local stock brokerage RTG & Co. and a former PSE president.

In 2013, the PSEi breached the 6,000 and 7,000 marks and hit an all-time intraday high of 7,403.65 and a record close of 7,349.95. It ended the year with a gain of 1.3 percent.