Philippine stocks dip on technical correction

MANILA, Philippines—The local stocks index faltered on Monday as investors took a respite after last week’s dizzying climb to new heights.

The Philippine Stock Exchange index gave up 18.89 points, or 0.37 percent, to close at 5,127.

“This is simply a reflexive pullback,” said First Metro Asset Management president Gus Cosio. “Stock prices will be surging again after a few days.”

“The local bourse paused for a technical breather,” said Yapster e-Trade, the online arm of F. Yap Securities.

The services counter led the day’s decliners with its 1.2 percent sub-index loss. Only the financial and industrial counters managed to end in the green.

Value turnover thinned to P7.6 billion from Friday’s P10.5 billion. Despite the drop in the main index, there were 93 advancers that edged out 86 decliners, which meant that some trades shifted back to second- and third-liners.

Index heavyweight PLDT dropped by 1.7 percent to P2,688. Other index stocks that fell in heavy trade were DMCI, EDC, AEV, ALI, JG Summit, MPI and AP.

On the other hand, gains by SM Investments, Megaworld, URC, Meralco, AGI, Metrobank and Semirara tempered the index decline.

Second-liners Security Bank and FLI also gained in heavy trade.  Dizon and NiHao shares also traded higher in heavy volume.

For the market to establish a convincing breakout past 5,000, the PSEi must surge higher by 3-5 percent from this level, which means it must hurdle 5,150 and 5,250 next. Last week, strong global risk appetite propelled the main index to a new record high of 5,145.89.

The local benchmark index has rallied by 755.04 points, or 17 percent, since the start of the year. It was the best-performing index in Asia last year despite a modest 4 percent gain in 2011.