PH shares see three-day climb amid Wall St. gains

The main index took cues from the positive performance of the United States markets overnight, enabling it to the end in the 6,600 territory on Thursday.

The benchmark Philippine Stock Exchange index (PSEi) gained 0.98 percent or 64.02 points to close at 6,630.85, while the wider All Shares rose 1.02 percent or 40.31 points to finish at 4,005.09.

Philstocks Financial Inc. senior research analyst Japhet Tantiangco attributed the market’s climb to Wall Street’s overnight rally, following the result of the Federal Reserve’s policy meeting.

The Federal Reserve decided to keep policy rates unchanged, while accommodative rates are likely to be kept through 2023.

Meanwhile, the Dow Jones, S&P 500 and Nasdaq rose 0.58 percent, 0.29 percent and 0.4 percent, respectively.

Foreign funds, on the other hand, continued to exit the local market and net foreign selling amounted to P397.96 million on Thursday.

Tantiangco said this marks the market’s 22nd day of net foreign selling, which averages P1.11 billion daily.

Trading was also tepid as net value turnover was at P5.79 billion, well below the year-to-date average of P10.23 billion.

For his part, AAA Equities head of research Christopher Mangun said trading volumes continued to decline as investors took on a wait-and-see approach.

“There is still some hope that the pandemic situation will improve in the coming weeks, which will give the investor sentiment a boost,” Mangun noted.

He added that until then, the local bourse would continue moving sideways with a slight negative bias.

The Philippines recorded 4,387 new cases of the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) on Wednesday, bringing the total to 635,698.

The financials sector headed the climb at 2.28 percent, while the holding firms index was the sole decliner at 0.06 percent.

Total volume turnover was at 3.06 billion shares valued at P8.85 billion.
Winners edged out losers at 149 to 64, while 41 securities were unchanged.