PSE INDEX BARELY SCRAPES MILESTONE LEVEL

The Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) index barely scraped to hit its psychological milestone level, as profit-taking ensued right after the opening minutes with blue chips and second liners gyrating wildly, as it closed at 7,002.22 points, with a subdued rise of 11.21 points or 0.16 percent.

Market bellwether SM Investments showed the extent of the volatility in trading as it went to a low of P1,055 and a high of P1,077, emerging as the most active stock with trades of P10.826 billion, closing P3 higher at P1,071.

Dito CME also gyrated between a low of P16.84 and a high of P18.12 before closing 16 centavos higher at P17.86, with the second most active trading of P964 million.

The third most active was Converge, which closed P1.04 higher to P18.78, with a high and a low of P21.20 and P18.50 on trades of P739 million.

Trading was again hefty with value turnover at P16.59 billion with 98 shares up, 123 down and 44 shares unchanged.

The two unchanged shares that were in the Top 20 active stocks were second liners, Basic Energy at P1.15 and MRC Allied at P0.55, with respective trades of P99.2 million and P73 million.

There was net foreign buying of P6 million, with foreign buys of P1.587 billion and foreign selling of P1.5818 billion. With the sub sectors evenly matched, the financials were up 0.25 percent; industrials, up 0.34 percent, and the services, up 0.39 percent.

The holding firms was down 0.03 percent while the mining and property sub=sectors lost 0.16 percent and 0.20 percent respectively.

Market darling MerryMart was up by 19 centavos to P7.25, while food giant Jollibee Food rose by P1.40 to P180.10, even with foreign selling of P57 million.

Ayala Corp was down by P13 to P789 with foreign selling of P40 million. Ayala Land went up by 10 centavos to P40.45, while Ayala Energy lost 21 centavos to P7.60

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