Philippine stocks fall below 5,400 mark after Wall St. bloodbath

Image from pse.com.ph

MANILA, Philippines—The local stocks index fell below the 5,400 mark on Wednesday as an overnight bloodbath in Wall Street soured investors’ risk appetite.

The main-share Philippine Stock Exchange index fell by 33.63 points, or 0.62 percent, to 5,398.69.  Elsewhere in the region, stock markets’ indices mostly went down but losses were tempered by an improved indicator of factory output in China.

At the local market, the day’s decline was led by the financial, holding-firm and mining/oil counters whose sub-indices tumbled by over 1 percent.

Only the services counter managed to stay afloat.

Value turnover amounted to P5.67 billion. There were 43 advancers, which were overwhelmed by 120 decliners while 42 stocks were unchanged.

A sharp decline in US stocks overnight, in turn, due to weak third-quarter earnings, spurred profit-taking on local large-cap stocks as well as on second-liners that recently performed strongly.

The day’s PSEi laggers were AGI (-3.61 percent), FGen (-2.05 percent), Megaworld (-2.04 percent), MPI (-1.95 percent), SMIC (-1.57 percent), RLC (-1.54 percent), BDO (-1.25 percent), AEV (-1.24 percent), URC (-1.22 percent) and BPI (-1.2 percent).

On the other hand, an outperformer among PSEi stocks was Belle (+4.17 percent) on speculation that an investment deal with Melco would be finalized soon. Belle vice chairman Willy Ocier is in Australia as part of President Aquino’s business delegation and there were speculations that he would meet with Australian billionaire James Packer there to iron out the deal with Melco. LR (+4.13 percent), which will have a minority stake in the casino venture if and when finalized, also benefited from the upswing.

PLDT (+1.06 percent) also helped temper the day’s index decline. Other PSEi gainers were SMDC (+1.13 percent) and Petron (+0.93 percent).

Among second-liners FLI gained (+1.46 percent). It was disclosed on Wednesday that affiliate East West Bank had purchased P1 billion worth of the property developer’s receivables as part of the bank’s strategy to grow its residential mortgage business.