THE LOCAL stock barometer rallied to the 6,700 level on Friday as investors picked up shares ahead of the Chinese New Year turnover and the corporate earnings reporting season.
The Philippine Stock Exchange index (PSEi) racked up 112.3 points or 1.69 percent to close at 6,765.13 on Friday, tracking mostly firmer emerging markets in the region.
For this volatile week, the PSEi added 77.51 points or 1.15 percent.
“The market is holding on to recent gains,” said Alejandro Yu, president of local stock brokerage RS Lim & Co., noting that the weakest sectors – gaming and mining sectors – were recently aiding the rally. “But it looks like we’re ripe for reversal,” he said.
Considering that the overnight gain in the Dow Jones Industrial index was small, Lim said this rally could be due to placing bets ahead of the long holiday break. However, he said this was unusual as the previous practice was to pare holdings ahead of long holiday breaks.
The market is heading for a long weekend in celebration of the Lunar New Year on Feb 8, which will mark a shift to the “Year of the Fire Monkey.”
Lim said the recent moves of Chinese regulators to crack down on currency speculators and avoid hard landing may have been the catalyst for the market. “They want to show they are in control,” he said.
On Friday, all counters were up but the services counter gained the most, rising by 2.52 percent. The financial, industrial and holding firm counters all added 1 percent while the mining/oil and property counters modestly gained.
Value turnover for the day amounted to P7.39 billion. There were 106 advancers that edged out 54 decliners while 53 stocks were unchanged.
MPI led the PSEi higher with its 5.95 percent spike while ICTSI and Metrobank both advanced by over 4 percent.
Jollibee, Megaworld and LTG added over 3 percent while URC, AC, BDO, PLDT, Globe and JG Summit rose by over 2 percent. GTCAP gained 1.84 percent while AP and ALI slightly firmed up.
Outside of the PSEi stocks, notable gainers included DNL (+4.33 percent) and RRHI (+1.41 percent).
It was reported that DNL sees exports resuming a growth of over 20 percent this year, a turnaround from last year’s contraction linked to port congestion problems in the metropolis.