PSEi ends on a whimper as traders look to China’s key growth data

The local stock barometer slipped after a six-day run-up on Friday as investors pocketed gains while regional markets were mixed as investors weighed China’s first quarter growth data.

The Philippine Stock Exchange index lost 35.98 points or 0.49 percent to close at 7,321.30.

All counters ended in the red but the most affected was the mining/oil counter, which slumped by 1.32 percent.

Value turnover for the day amounted to P6.18 billion.  There were nearly twice as much decliners (128) than advancers (68) while 46 stocks were unchanged.

Megaworld and MPI pulled the PSEi down, both slipping by over 2 percent, while ALI, URC and Metrobank all fell by over 1 percent.

DMCI, SMIC and Jollibee also slipped.

Outside of PSEi stocks, Security Bank fell by 3.06 percent while Xurpas slumped by 2.83 percent.  The dayís most actively traded company, retailer RRHI, fell by 1.39 percent.

Conglomerates AC and JG Summit as well as BPI were unscathed.

NOW Corp., which recently announced plans to raise $50 million to fund its broadband business, rose by 11.82 percent.

China reported on Friday that its first quarter gross domestic product growth slowed to 6.7 percent year-on-year while GDP deflator, seen a more representative measure of economy-wide prices, reversed to 0.5 percent for the same period. Industrial production rebounded on rising capacity utilization of heavy industrial sectors, such as steel and cement, while retail sales growth was supported by recovering auto sales and housing-related items sales. Doris Dumlao-Abadilla