By Joann Villanueva/PNA
MANILA — Profit-taking continued to drain Philippine equities, with the main gauge down to the 7,900-level, while the market’s cautious stance weighed down the peso Thursday.
The Philippine Stock Exchange index (PSEi) slipped by 1.12 percent, or 89.68 points, to 7,920.24 points.
A trader attributed this to investors cashing in on the market’s recent rally.
The All Shares index also declined and ended the day at 4,811.99 points, down 0.96 percent or 46.42 points.
Services registered the highest drop at 1.45 percent and was followed by Financials, 1.34 percent; Holding Firms, 1.19 percent; Property, 1.07 percent; and Industrial, 0.31 percent.
Only the Mining and Oil counter posted an increase after it rose 0.49 percent. Volume reached 4.6 billion shares amounting to PHP7.3 billion.
Decliners led advancers 134 to 75 while 50 shares were unchanged.
Relatively, the local currency ended sideways after the strong trading in the morning session was countered by risk-off sentiment in the second half of the trading day.
It ended the day at 52.13 to a greenback from 52.075 Tuesday. Trading began with the peso at 51.96, way better than its 52.185 opening the previous day.
It traded between 51.9 and 52.17, bringing the average for the day at 52.003. Volume remained in the billion-dollar level, nearly USD1.1 billion, but lower than day-ago’s USD1.16 billion.
The currency pair is seen to trade between 52.10 and 52.30 Thursday.
