By Joann Villanueva/PNA
MANILA — News suggesting that the Federal Reserve’s key rates will remain on their current trajectory this year resulted in the weakness of the Philippine Stock Exchange index (PSEi) and the peso Thursday.
PSEi slid by 0.10 percent, or 7.94 points, to 7,931.30 points, which Regina Capital Managing Director Luis Limlingan traced to “dovish FOMC minutes”, among others.
The minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting last January 29-30 showed that some monetary officials are adamant about continuing with the rate hikes even if inflation has been on a downtrend, with the January 2019 figure at 1.6 percent from month-ago’s 1.9 percent.
US authorities’ long-term inflation target is two percent.
With risk-off sentiment up, the other counters posted mixed results, with the All Shares almost unchanged after a 0.001 percent, or 0.06 points, rise to 4,857.00 points.
Services, Industrial and Mining and Oil went up by 0.56 percent; 0.49 percent and 0.40 percent, respectively.
On the other hand, Holding Firms declined by 0.33 percent and was followed by the Financials, 0.32 percent; and Property, 0.21 percent.
Volume reached 804.1 million shares amounting to nearly PHP7 billion.
Gainers led losers at 106 to 90 while 56 shares were unchanged.
Relatively, the local currency ended the day’s trade at 52.13 from 52.06 a day ago.
It opened better at 51.98 from 52.14 in the previous session.
It strengthened to 51.97 but also slipped to 52.145, resulting to an average of 52.056.
Volume reached USD1.23 billion, higher than the USD873.34 million a day ago.
The currency pair is seen to trade between 51.90 and 52.10 Friday.
