PH stocks end 2-day rally

MOST local stocks slumped on Wednesday, tracking a global bond selldown amid fresh Eurozone jitters.

Ending a strong two-day run-up, the Philippine Stock Exchange index lost 45.57 points or 0.58 percent to close at 7,873.64.

Most counters ended in the red. Only the mining/oil counter bucked the downturn, rising by 1.87 percent. The counter was led higher by Nickel Asia, which was up by 9.92 percent on rosy volume growth outlook.

Value turnover amounted to P8.4 billion. There were 82 advancers which were outnumbered by 99 decliners while 50 stocks were unchanged.

EDC led the day’s decline, slipping by 2.5 percent on news of outage in the Tongonan power plant. AGI likewise pulled back by 2.14 percent.

SMIC, the day’s most actively traded stock, also fell by 1.67 percent alongside SM Prime, BDO, URC and ALI which all dipped by over 1 percent.

BPI, PLDT, Bloomberry, Semirara and AP also contributed to the decline.

On the other hand, LTG defied the day’s downturn, rising by 3.6 percent while AC also went up by 1 percent. Metrobank, GTCAP, Globe and MPI also firmed up.

Across the region, stock markets were mostly sluggish as a sell-off in global sovereign bonds spilled over jitters to equities. This was amid fresh concerns over a Greece debt default and long positions in European debt.