PSE CONTINUES TO RISE ON GCQ OPTIMISM

The Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) index continued its rise today, fresh from its more than 200-point increase last Friday to close at 5,893.49 points and looked set to hitting the next 6,000-point milestone.

Opening lower from its previous finish, the PSE immediately overcame its initial deficit to surge to 5,893.49 points at past 11 am as gainers overwhelmed losers, 127 to 63 with 37 shares unchanged.

Value turnover was robust at P6.97 billion with SM Investments and SM Prime posting gains while BDO Unibank declined. SM Investments rose by P5 to P920 on total trade of P621.47 million to snag the most active stock while SM Prime went up by P1.60 to close at P31.75 with transactions of P445 million.

BDO, the two conglomerate’s sister firm, went down by P1.40 to close at P99 on value turnover of P412 million after it disclosed to the PSE that it is adding another P20 billion in loss provisions to what it had earlier set aside after the first quarter of P2.3 billion.

Food chain Jollibee Food Corp. finally got its bearing with P6.40 gain in today’s trade  to close at P115.10 on value turnover of P332 million. Last week, JFC had come under selling pressure after posting a loss in its operations.

The other notable gainers were Ayala Land , Metro Pacific, Meralco and Security Bank while the big losers were GT Capital,and Ayala Corp.,