FOREIGN SELLING RATTLES PSE

Foreign selling rattled the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) today, dropping below another support tier to 5,738.39 points, down by 60.85 points or 1.05 percent with all sub sectors down save for a marginal rise in the services sector indicative of the breadth of the negative sentiment that has rocked the market.

Net foreign selling was a hefty P1.637 billion, the first time it hit that level with the locals still out of the game due to the ghost month that is set to end this September 16 yet. Value turnover was P6.377 billion with 64 gainers, 111 losers and 55 issues unchanged.

Ayala Land bore the brunt of the decline due to foreign selling as its share price went down by P1.30 to P27, a huge drop of 4.59 percent as foreigners dumped P781 million of the issue on account of the nervousness in the country’s economic growth. It was the most active stock with trade of P1.104 billion.

The property sector showed the biggest decline among the sub sectors, going down by 2.54 percent while the financials (down 1.63 percent), industrial (down 0.14 percent), holding (down 0.60), mining and oil (down 0.98 percent) overwhelmed the marginal rise in services of 0.08 percent.

Market bellwether SM Investments was the second most active stock with its share price benefitting from foreign buying of P323 million closing P3.50 higher P840.50 with value turnover of P688 million. Its sister firm SM Prime lost 45 centavos to close at P28.05 even with the foreign buying support of P45 million out of its total transactions of P589 million.

The telco stocks had mixed sentiments with the Globe Telecom up by P20 to P2,050 while PLDT and Dito lost P15 and 2 centavos respectively to close at P1,450 and P3.31 respectively. Jollibee Foods rose by P3.20 to P136.80 while Bloomberry was up by 32 centavos to P6.60.

BDO Unibank and Metrobank lost P1.85 and 40 centavos to close at P85.75 and P33.10 respectively. The two had foreign selling of P83 million for BDO and P121 million for Metrobank. The other issues that had net foreign selling include Ayala Corp (P173 million), PureGold (P80 million), PLDT (P70 million), JG Summit (P50 million), GT Capital (P45 million) and Universal Robina (P41 million).

Market darling MerryMart went up by 7.37 percent with value turnover of P220 million. The issue opened at P2.85 and went down to as low as P2.76 before buying resumed to hit a high of P310 before closing 4 centavos lower.