PH stocks dip

MANILA, Philippines—Local stocks dipped further on Friday as many investors chose to play safe by pocketing gains given mixed signals on the health of the US economy.

The main-share Philippine Stock Exchange index shed 12.77 points or 0.3 percent to finish at 4,285.16 on further profit-taking as investors locked up profits from index stocks Lepanto A, Aboitiz Power, Megaworld, PLDT, AGI, EDC and URC.

San Miguel Corp., Leisure & Resorts and Vista Land also succumbed to profit-taking.

The day’s losses, however, were tempered by the modest gains posted by SM Investments, Metrobank, Ayala Land, First Gen and ICTSI. Non-index stocks Atlas, Belle and Cebu Air also gained in active trade.

Shares of SM Prime and DMCI were unchanged.

Value turnover thinned out to P4.64 billion from the previous session’s P5.99 billion. There were 46 advancers which were edged out by 81 decliners while 52 stocks were unchanged.

All counters traded in the red except for the financial sub-index, which was aided by the gains posted by Metrobank.

Local stocks defied a generally upbeat regional equities market. Asian stock markets were mostly up on Friday as investors welcomed positive tidings from Wall Street following the initial public offering of social networking site LinkedIn.

The Dow Jones Industrial Index was up by 45.14 points or 0.36 percent overnight.