PSEi slips on US Fed jitters

THE LOCAL stock market slipped on Monday as US Federal Reserve interest rate jitters weighed down regional markets.

The Philippine Stock Exchange index lost 25.53 points or 0.35 percent to close at 7,334.52 in mixed trade. Across the region, markets traded with caution ahead of speeches by US Federal Reserve this week. Last week, some Fed officials have made pronouncements that interest rates may rise as early as April.

At the local market, the day’s decline was led by the mining/oil counter which slipped by 1.23 percent. The financial, services and property counters also declined.

On the other hand, the industrial and holding firm counters eked out modest gains.

Value turnover for the day amounted to P5.11 billion. Despite the PSEi’s decline, market breadth was positive as there were 107 advancers that beat 92 decliners while 44 stocks were unchanged.

Petron tumbled by 3.28 percent while ALI and SM Investments – the two most actively traded stocks- both declined by over 2 percent.

BDO and PLDT both slipped by over 1 percent while Metrobank, URC and MPI all declined.

FGEN bucked the day’s downturn, rising by 2.39 percent while AC and Globe also gained over 1 percent. SM Prime, GTCAP and Megaworld all faltered.