MANILA-- Worries on the impact of the new coronavirus from China resulted in the weakness of both the Philippine Stock Exchange index (PSEi) and the peso Monday.
The main equities index shed 0.47 percent, or 35.78 points, to 7,587.63 points, which BPI Research attributed to the concerns on the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) after China reported more than 80 deaths from the epidemic that originated from Wuhan, China.
Several cases of 2019-nCoV have been reported in other countries like Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, and the United States.
Philippine authorities have also reported they are currently monitoring 11 people suspected of having been infected by the virus.
With the risk-off sentiments, most of the counters in the local bourse tracked the main index, with the All Shares down by 0.62 percent, or 28.23 points, to 4,495.34 points.
Industrial, Holding Firms, and Services lost 1.38 percent, 0.71 percent, and 0.67 percent, respectively.
On the other hand, Financials rose 0.22 percent, Property, 0.19 percent; and Mining and Oil, 0.10 percent.
Volume reached 1.90 billion shares amounting to PHP4.3 billion.
Losers led gainers at 119 to 69, while 43 shares were unchanged.
The local currency ended the week’s first trading day at 50.835 to a dollar from 50.815 last Friday.
It opened the day at 50.88, better than its 51.00 start in the previous session.
It traded between 50.94 and 50.8, resulting in an average of 50.872.
Volume totaled to USD787.95 million, lower than the USD1.1 billion at the end of last week.
BPI Research forecasts the peso to trade between 50.70 and 50.10 to a greenback on Tuesday. (PNA)
