A normal, busy day at the Philippine Stock Exchange. INQUIRER file photo
LOCAL stocks firmed up slightly on Tuesday but investors remained jittery despite China’s fresh injection of liquidity into its battered financial markets while geopolitical tension in the Middle East continued to escalate.
The Philippine Stock Exchange index added 1.71 points or 0.03 percent to close at 6,835.13 in mixed trade as investors weighed the latest intervention in China.
“In our view, the bottom-line is not more strong policy stimulus and the gov’t will allow market to play a more important role,” investment bank BofA Merrill Lynch said in a research note. “It helps promoting efficiency gains, but investors grew concerned about potential growth challenges and less policy support.”
Locally, inflation crept higher for a second straight month to 1.5 percent year-on-year in December from 1.1 percent in November.
“Going forward, modest inflation should continue to hold in 2016. Given that the increase in food prices in November had been typhoon related, it is unlikely to be persistent,” British bank Standard Chartered said in a research note.
“Rice inflation, the main driver of inflation in previous years, remains benign. At the same time, energy inflation is likely to remain low. We expect inflation to reach 2.2 percent in 2016, from 1.4 percent in 2015,” the bank said.
The PSEi’s modest gain was supported by holding firms and property firms which slightly advanced while other counters slipped.
Value turnover was still thin at P3.99 billion as many investors were still on vacation after the long holiday break. Despite the PSEi’s gain, market breadth was negative as there were only 73 advancers which were outnumbered by 97 decliners while 40 stocks were unchanged.
GTCAP, BDO, SMIC and AP led the PSEi higher with a gain of over 1 percent. SM Prime, MPI, AGI and AEV also contributed to the gains.
One notable gainer was Liberty Telecoms which rose by 8.19 percent as investors anticipated the launch of a telecom venture between the San Miguel conglomerate and Telstra of Australia.
On the other hand, Metrobank fell by 2.28 percent while URC, Jollibee and AC all fell by over 1 percent. ALI, Globe, JG Summit, Megaworld and RLC also declined.
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