By Joann Villanueva/PNA
MANILA — Both the Philippine Stock Exchange index (PSEi) and the peso ended weaker Monday as Chinese markets takes the rest of the week off for the Lunar New Year celebrations.
PSEi lost 0.92 percent, or 74.68 points, to 8,069.48 points.
Most of the other counters tracked the main gauge, with the All Shares down by 0.35 percent, or 16.97 points, to 4,892.54 points.
Holding Firms registered the highest drop among the sectors with the decline of 0.93 percent and was followed by Financials, 0.80 percent; Industrial, 0.75 percent; and Property, 0.59 percent.
On the other hand, Mining and Oil rose 0.83 percent and Services, 0.14 percent.
Volume reached 3.27 billion shares amounting to PHP7.3 billion.
Gainers led losers at 124 to 83 while 47 shares were unchanged.
There will be no trading in the local bourse on Tuesday as Malacañang has declared February 5, 2019 as special non-working holiday in the country in line with the Chinese New Year.
Regina Capital Managing Director Luis Limlingan expects “low value turn-over” for the local equities market when trading resumes on Wednesday.
He said report on the January 2019 inflation, which the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) is scheduled to release on Tuesday, will be another matter for the local market to digest on Wednesday.
Inflation is expected to post another decline in the first month this year after decelerating to 6 percent and 5.1 percent, respectively, last November and December.
This, after rate of price increases peaked at 6.7 percent last September to October.
The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas forecasts the January 2019 inflation to stay between 3-5.1 percent.
Relatively, the local currency ended the day at 52.41 from 52.23-finish at the end of last week.
A trader said the peso mirrored the PSEi as investors decided to stay on the sidelines due to the Chinese New Year holiday.
The local unit opened the day at 52.32, weaker than its 52.13 start in the previous trading.
It strengthened to 52.28 but also slipped to 52.45, resulting in an average of 52.358.
Volume reached USD842.9 million, lower that the USD881.3 million last Friday.
The currency pair is seen to trade between 52.20 and 52.40 Wednesday.
