PSE INDEX SHOWS WEAKNESS

The Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) today exhibited weakness across the board with all sub-indices down, the net foreign selling hitting three digits anew, and the value turnover below average to close at 6,924.21 points, down by 49.43 points or 0.71 percent.

Value turnover was below the trading average at just P4.46 billion with losers overwhelming gainers, 127 to 59 with 57 shares unchanged.

The Top 20 most active stocks were mostly in the red with just two posting advances and one unchanged as net foreign selling hit P211 million on foreign buying of P1.519 billion and foreign selling of P1.735 billion.

Only SM Prime and Bloomberry posted gains, respectively of 5 centavos to P36.80 and 4 centavos to P6.49 among the Top 20 active stocks, while Megaworld was unchanged at P3.21. The most active stock was Ayala Energy which declined by 3 centavos to P8.67 on trades of P295.1 million, even with foreign buying of P40 million.

Ayala Land was down by 45 centavos to P36.35 with foreign selling of P54 million, while Ayala Corp, its mother firm, also had P50 million in foreign selling as it went down by P13.50 to P798. Jollibee Foods lost P1.60 to P212.40 while Monde Nissin declined by 24 centavos to P16.20. Boulevard Holdings dropped by P0.009 to P0.14.

The services sub-index posted the biggest loss with 1.30 percent, followed by mining and oil at 0.98 percent. The other losers were financials, down 0.64 percent, industrials, 0.55 percent, holding firms, 0.77 percent, and property, 0.48 percent.

The market opened high and later retreated by 70 points before recovering lost ground as investors remained unimpressed by the good news that was being bruited about like the stable inflation rate in the face of the huge P11 trillion debt of the national government incurred by its COVID-19 response.

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