PSE INDEX DOWN ON FOREIGN SELLING

The Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) index went down today although muted on local buying support to close 26.53 points lower or 0.41 percent to 6,518.64 points on continued selling by foreign investors, property issues accounting for the big sell-downs in the market still unnerved by the lack of positive news in the economic front.

Ayala Land and SM Prime were the top active stocks with the former having closed 45 centavos to P34.05 on trades of P525 million out of which P254 million were accounted for by foreign selling

The latter, on the other hand was unchanged at P35.60 with a turnover of P317 million, with foreigners unloading P143 million thereby pushing down the property sub-sector to 0.47 percent.

Market bellwether SM Investments, however, bucked the negative sentiment as it posted a P7 gain to P972 backed by local buying support.

BDO Unibank went up by P2.10 to P103.50 and was the third most active with trades of P288 million, which in turn led to the rise in the financials sub-sector by 0.26 percent, the only gainer among the sub-indices.

The mining and oil sector suffered the biggest loss at 1.32 percent while the industrials, holding firms, and services respectively posted declines of 0.63 percent, 0.41 percent, 0.47 percent.

Value turnover amounted to P5,9 billion with net foreign selling amounting to P869 million on foreign buying of P1.651 billion and foreign selling of P2.506 billion.

Converge dropped by 32 centavos to P18.08 while Ayala Energy rose by 10 centavos to P7.74. Puregold declined by 50 centavos to P37.10 shile Metrobank lost 5 centavos to P44.70.

There were 120 gainers against 86 losers with 48 shares unchanged and market analysts believe that the index may drop further should the COVID-19 cases surge as it would indicate more losses for the economy.

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