PSEi ends lower

The local stock barometer returned to negative territory yesterday as jitters over the health of some Western banks and the recent oil output deal affected investors’ appetite.

The main-share Philippine Stock Exchange index (PSEi) lost 85.13 points or 1.1 percent to close at 7,629.73.

All counters ended lower but the most battered were the services and property sub-indices, which slumped by 2.34 percent and 1.69 percent.

“Opec (Organization of Petroleum Countries) just agreed to reduce crude production to 32.5-33 million barrels a day without country specific quotas—a soft output cut at best,” investment house Merrill Lynch said in a research note, adding that Opec’s action won’t propel oil prices much above its $70-a-barrel mid-year target.

Citi said risk sentiment had been hit overnight by concerns over the health of European financial firms. Moving forward, Citi said US elections and the health of European banks could be “strong deterrents” to investor appetite.

On Thursday, US stocks were weighed down by the drop in Deutsche Bank’s shares to a record low following a fine of up to $14 billion slapped by the U.S. Department of Justice over its sale of mortgage-backed securities. The scandal over Wells Fargo’s opening of client accounts without agreement also spooked Wall Street.

At the local market, value turnover swelled to P13.58 billion, bloated by a stock sale of URC shares. There were 119 decliners that edged out 65

advancers while 45 stocks were unchanged.

There was net foreign buying amounting to P3.86 billion, aided by the block sale of URC shares to an Australian group.

URC fell by 2.52 percent after ceding shares to the owners of Australian snack food firm Snackbrands as part of the consideration for its takeover of the foreign company. It was the most actively traded stock at the market. URC crossed about P4.4 billion worth of treasury shares in favor of Snackbrands group.

On the other hand, ICTSI, Globe and Megaworld fell by more than 3 percent while SM Prime, GTCAP, MPI and PLDT all slipped by over 2 percent. Metrobank, ALI, JG Summit and AEV all declined by over 1 percent.

Among the few PSEi stocks that bucked the downturn were BDO and SMIC, which respectively rose by 1.67 percent and 0.52 percent.  Doris Dumlao-Abadilla