PSEi barely moves as investors await news
Credit to Author: ANGELICA BALLESTEROS, TMT| Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2019 16:49:42 +0000
THE stock market finished slightly higher on Thursday as investors stayed on the sidelines due to the lack of market-moving developments.
The benchmark Philippine Stock Exchange index (PSEi) grew by 0.19 percent or 15.35 points to close at 7,876.40 while the broader All Shares rose by 0.16 percent or 7.54 points to end at 4,843.44.
Fidelity Securities Inc. trader Jenesis dela Peña said market players stayed on the sidelines while waiting for fresh catalysts.
P2P Trade Online sales associate Gabriel Jose Perez said that flattish trading was likely to carry over today, March 29, given the lack of leads.
The PSEi traded in contrast with an overnight drop on Wall Street that was attributed to continued worries over US economic growth.
Asian markets fluctuated after the negative lead from Wall Street.
Tokyo sank 1.6 percent as exporters were hit by a jump in the safe-haven yen, while Shanghai shed almost one percent.
Seoul dropped 0.8 percent and Taipei eased 0.1 percent, but Hong Kong gained 0.2 percent and Sydney rose 0.7 percent as they recovered from initial selling.
Singapore was up 0.3 percent while Jakarta was also in positive territory.
Against this background, top Chinese and US negotiators held their latest round of trade talks in Beijing Thursday, with hopes the two economic superpowers can find a deal to end their long-running tariffs row.
Jeffrey Halley, a senior market analyst at OANDA, warned the meetings were “taking on ever more importance”.
“An agreement between both parties is the key macro-economic event for [the first half of] 2019 and will dictate whether we have a slow and low global pullback or if the day of reckoning arrives much sooner and more aggressively,” he said in a note.
The two-day meeting is the first since China put into law new measures seen as an olive branch in the high-stakes stand-off, offering to address key issues including intellectual property and forced technology transfer.
Back in Manila, sectoral results were mixed with the services and mining and oil the only losers, down 0.55 percent and 1.54 percent, respectively.
Volume turnover was thin at only 900 million shares valued at P5.09 billion traded.
Advancers beat decliners, 120 to 78, while 46 issues remained unchanged.
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