PH stock index closer lower after hitting new high

Photo taken from pse.com.ph

MANILA, Philippines—The local stock index soared to a new intra-day high on Friday on hopes of more monetary easing but  succumbed to profit-taking afterward.

The Philippine Stock Exchange index hit a new record high of 5,484.63 in intra-day trade as a benign inflation rate for September prompted the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas to signal openness to another interest rate cut.  But as investors scrambled to lock up profits, the index closed 3.9 points or 0.07 percent lower at 5,439.84.

Trading was mixed across counters, with the financial, services and property counters dragging the index down.  On the other hand, modest gains by the industrial, holding firms and mining/oil counters tempered the index decline.

As investors locked up gains from blue chips, they scouted for opportunities in second-  and third-liner stocks. Thus there were 102 advancers against  69 decliners even if the PSEi was slightly in the red.

The index stocks that were most battered by profit-taking were ALI (-2.5 percent), AGI (-1.89 percent) and Meralco (-1.7 percent).  BPI, SM Prime, PLDT, Metrobank, SMIC, EDC and BDO also ended lower.

On the other hand, the index stocks that outperformed for the day were  URC (+4.41 percent), Megaworld (+3.06 percent), JGS (+2.67 percent), MWC (+2.13 percent), Petron (+2.04 percent) and AC (+1.09 percent).   AP also contributed gains.

Among non-index stocks, investors bought up Alcorn (+48.39 percent), FLI (+2.96 percent) and Bloomberry (+2.78 percent).

Alcorn sizzled on speculations of backdoor-listing of some assets by Filipino-Chinese businessman Lucio Co but the company said it was not aware of this.

Across the region, stock markets were mostly higher after the European Central Bank committed to buy bonds of debt-strapped states in the eurozone.