PSE BUCKS CONVERGE DROP

The Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) bucked today an early decline as the Converge IPO bombed out opening at a fluctuation down from its offering price and dropping further to finish with a marginal 7.14 points or 0.11 percent gain to close at 6,491.19 points.

Today's PSE gain does not augur well for the stock market after the euphoric five-day gains in the index, surmounting the 6,000 point milestone and adding more as the days went by as investors in Converge were left holding losses as the issue opened lower at P16.78 and went to a dizzyingly low of P15.02 before rising to P15.22.

Converge was the most active stock with P3.64 billion in transactions with losses of P1.58 or 9.40 percent from it's IPO price of P16.80.

Market bellwether SM Investments rose by P18.50 to close at P988.50 on transactions of P506 million while its affiliate SM Prime finished the day at P33.95 down by 30 centavos.

Net foreign buying stood at P400 million with foreign selling of P21.522.billion and foreign buying of P25.967 with SM and Ayala Land as top buys of P173 million and P153 million respectively while the top sold stock was Converge at P94 million.

Total trade amounted to P31.09 billion with 102 gainers, 107 losers and 44 shares unchanged. Ayala Land rose 46 centavos to P34.40, while Dito gained 20 centavos to P6.61. 

Jollibee Foods lost P2.60 to P176.40, while Ayala Corp dropped by P9 to P766. BDO Unibank went down by P1.80 to P95.20, while Bank of PI lost 45 centavos to P73.35. Metrobank, however, posted a gain of 30 centavos.

Market darling MerryMart rose by 11 centavos to P3.42