Stocks continue to slide

MANILA, Philippines—Local stocks dipped further 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, 81 decliners and 52 unchanged stocks.

Local stocks defied a generally upbeat regional equities market as many investors were still in a profit-taking mood.

Foreign investors were on a net selling position that resulted in net foreign outflows of P225 million.

Asian stock markets were mostly up Friday as investors welcomed positive news from Wall Street following the initial public offering of social networking site LinkedIn. The Dow Jones industrial index was up 45.14 points or 0.36 percent overnight. Doris C. Dumlao