PSEi slips below 7,600 on foreign selling

THE LOCAL stock barometer slipped below 7,600 on Tuesday as foreign investors continued to pare down their position and dump large-cap stocks.

The Philippine Stock Exchange index lost 57.58 points or 0.76 percent to close at 7,551.56. Elsewhere in the region, stock markets were mostly higher on optimism that Greece will strike a deal with creditors to avoid a debt default.

At the local market, the decline was led by the industrial counter, which fell by 1.47 percent. This counter was weighed down by URC, which slid by 5 percent and was the most actively traded stock for the day.

The holding firms, services, mining/oil and property counters also ended lower while the financial sub-index was modestly down.

Some dealers said foreign investors were pocketing gains from local stocks in line with the rotation of funds to North Asia. There was P798 million in net foreign selling in the market for the day.

Value turnover amounted to P6 billion. There were 70 advancers which were edged out by 92 decliners while 50 stocks were unchanged.

Aside from URC, the PSEi was dragged down by selling on Bloomberry (-4.15 percent) and URC’s parent conglomerate JG Summit (-3.62 percent). AGI also faltered by 2.39 percent)

ALI, SMIC, EDC, BPI, SM Prime and Jollibee also slipped.

Outside of PSEi stocks, among the notable decliners were consumer stocks RRHI and Puregold which both slumped by over 2 percent.

Among those that bucked the downturn were utility Meralco and infrastructure holding firm MPIC which both gained over 1 percent.

PLDT, Metrobank, BDO, GTCAP, AC and Megaworld also gained ground.