Lower inflation buoys PSEi
Credit to Author: ANGELICA BALLESTEROS, TMT| Date: Tue, 07 May 2019 16:29:54 +0000
THE stock market jumped back to the 7,900 level on Tuesday as investors cheered news of the easing inflation for April.
The bellwether Philippine Stock Exchange index (PSEi) rose by 0.62 percent or 48.33 points to close at 7,910.63 while the broader All Shares grew by 0.55 percent or 26.69 points to end at 4,886.55.
P2P Trade Online sales associate Gabriel Jose Perez pointed to inflation as having buoyed the index.
The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) said consumer prices eased to 3 percent from 3.3 percent in March. The PSA said last month’s inflation was the lowest since January 2018 and also settled within the 2.7 to 3.5 percent target range of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, with slower annual increase in the heavily-weighted food and non-alcoholic beverages accounted for the drop.
In a separate comment, Eagle Equities Inc. research head Christopher Mangun said the market slightly recovered after the sell-off the prior day. Mangun said market players were likely on a wait-and-see mode until after elections.
“It is a very good time to start accumulating issues while they are at a lower price. We are still anticipating a big move in the next couple of weeks,” he said.
The local market bucked Wall Street’s decline. The Dow Jones dropped by 0.25 percent, the S&P500 declined 0.45 percent, and the Nasdaq decreased 0.50 percent.
Regional markets were mixed as Tokyo fell 1.51 percent, Seoul declined 0.88 percent, and Bangkok slipped 0.42 percent. Shanghai grew 0.69 percent, Hong Kong rose 0.52 percent, Jakarta grew 0.75 percent, Singapore increased 0.82 percent.
In Manila, only the industrial index finished in the red, down 0.44 percent.
More than 513 million issues were traded valued at P5.5 billion.
Winners led losers, 100 to 86, while 50 issues were unchanged.
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