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Ukraine Narrative Wallops PSE Index
- By The Financial District
- Feb 21, 2022
- 2 min read
The Ukraine narrative walloped stocks early on today as The Philippine Stock Exchange index fell by as much as 138 points before bargain hunters came back with a vengeance, picking up shares that were earlier sold down to recover somewhat and finish with just 46.54 points or a 0.63 percent decline to 7,372.25 points.
Photo Insert: The Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) Index, February 21, 2022
Market bellwether SM Investments crumpled to as low as P843 before investors bought back the stock to finish at P860, do8wn by P61 or 6.62 percent and emerging as most active stock with P1.366 billion in trades.
Also sold down was Monde, which crashed to as low as P15.52, its closing price, to post a hefty loss of 15.52 percent or P54 centavos on trades of P292 million.
Jose Ricardo Garcia of Diversified Securities said that the market was spooked by the Ukraine narrative in which US President Joe Biden is asserting that there is an imminent invasion and that Russia's leader Vladimir Putin is readying, though the latter denied a planned military offensive.
The Biden pronouncement rocked the stock market as it could be a self-fulfilling one, a market participant said, citing the supposed intelligence finding from US sources that there is a WMD in Iraq leading to the US war in that nation that rocked the region.
SM's huge decline, as well as that of Monde, led to the hefty loss in the holdings subsector by 2.38 percent and industrials, to which Monde belongs, down by 0.97 percent. The other loser was services, down by 1.07 percent, while the gainers were financials, up by 0.02 percent, mining and oil by 1.25 percent, and property by 2.14 percent.
Property firms SM Prime and Ayala Land rose respectively to P39.90, up by P1.70, and P39.70, rising by 5 centavos.
Solar Philippines dropped by a huge 9.27 percent to P1.86, down by 61 centavos, emerging as the second most active stock with P1.019 billion in trades.
Globe and PLDT were unchanged at PP2,700 and P1,782, two of the 46 shares that were unchanged. There were 72 gainers and 125 losers with a value turnover of P9.114 billion.
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