MANILA – The Philippine Stock Exchange index (PSEi) ended Tuesday in the negative territory, mirroring US counterparts, as investors stayed on the sidelines following the release of the second-quarter economic growth, which also affected the peso.
The main equities index shed 0.14 percent, or 9.34 points, to 6,623.23 points.
All Shares ended sideways after rising by 0.05 percent, or 2.11 points, to 4,095 points.
Half of the sectoral indexes gained but the other half tracked the main index.
Those that gained during the day are the Mining and Oil index, 2.14 percent; Industrial, 0.07 percent; and Holding Firms, 0.06 percent.
On the other hand, the Property index fell by 0.51 percent, Services, 0.36 percent; and Financials, 0.28 percent.
Volume reached 1.56 billion shares amounting to PHP6.31 billion.
Gainers surpassed losers at 94 to 88, while 54 shares were unchanged.
Luis Limlingan, Regina Capital Development Corporation head of sales, said “investors assessed the per sector breakdown of the economy” when the government released the second-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) report.
The country’s rose by 11.8 percent from April to June, ending the five-quarter negative prints which started in the first quarter of 2020 due to the pandemic.
The first quarter output has been revised to -3.9 percent from -4.2 percent earlier.
“Investors still sold a bit, after discounting the information and aligned with the sentiment overseas,” Limlingan said, referring to the muted start for US equities which he partly attributed to profit-taking due to the impact of recent record-highs as well as the rise in coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) because of the Delta variant.
Meanwhile, the local currency ended the day at 50.395 against the US dollar, weaker than its 50.385 close a day ago.
It opened the trade at 50.39, better than the previous session’s 50.49 start.
It traded between 50.45 and 50.34, resulting in an average of 50.394.
Volume rose to USD898.6 million from Monday’s USD682.88 million. (PNA)
