Interest rate worries pull down PSEi

The local stock barometer fell sharply on Wednesday as investors braced for an uptick in local inflation and interest rates.

Tracking weak sentiment on Wall Street overnight, the main-share Philippine Stock Exchange index (PSEi) shed 109.05 points or 1.25 percent to close at 8,613.65.

With the market’s recent correction driven by inflation and interest rate-related woes, Papa Securities said two dates to look forward to would be the US Federal Reserve’s policy meeting on March 21 and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’ (BSP) monetary setting on March 22.

The market was expecting the US Fed to hike rates during this March meeting, and BSP following suit was not farfetched, Papa Securities said.

The PSEi was weighed down by the financial, industrial, holding firm and property counters, which all tumbled by over 1 percent.

The mining/oil counter bucked the day’s downturn, rising by 2.64 percent due to the 18.89-percent rally of PXP Energy, which benefited from talks the Philippines would go into a joint oil exploration with China.

The services counter firmed up by a modest 0.41 percent.

Value turnover for the day amounted to P9.53 billion.

There were 128 decliners that outnumbered 82 advancers, while 46 stocks were unchanged.

URC and Megaworld both slid by over 3 percent.

Investors also sold down shares of Ayala Land and BPI, which both fell by over 2 percent.