Philippine stock index back to 5,400 level

The main local stocks index on Thursday climbed back to the 5,400 level, posting modest gains alongside firmer regional markets and ahead of an anticipated 25-basis-point fresh interest rate cut by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.

The Philippine Stock Exchange index added 6.47 points, or 0.12 percent, to close at 5,405.16.

By counter, the day’s outperformer was the mining/oil index, which rose by 1.46 percent. The financial, property and holding firms also posted gains, making up for the slack in the industrial and services sub-indices.

Value turnover hit P5.23 billion. Despite the main index gain, there were more decliners (88) than gainers (78) in the stock market.

The large cap stocks that contributed most to the PSEi’s gains were ICTSI (+2.9 percent), Metrobank (+1.9 percent), ALI (+1.51 percent), AC (+1.39 percent), Jollibee (+0.99 percent) and Globe (+0.96 percent). BDO, EDC, Philex and BPI also supported the main index.

Among the second-liners, Empire East (+2.08 percent) gained in heavy volume.

On the other hand, the PSEi was weighed down by profit-taking on URC (-2.68 percent), MWC (-2.25 percent), Belle (-1.82 percent), DMCI (-1.51 percent) and AGI (-1.39 percent). PLDT, Petron, Meralco, FGen and AP were also among the index laggers.—Doris C. Dumlao