By Joann Villanueva/Philippine News Agency
MANILA – Both the Philippine peso and the Philippine Stock Exchange index (PSEi) ended the week’s first trading up on rate hike expectations from the Fed.
The local currency appreciated and ended the day at 51.00 from 51.13 close to a greenback Friday last week.
A trader attributed this to expectations of a cut in the Federal Reserve’s key rate following the Congressional statements of Fed Chair Jerome Powell last week.
Thus, the local unit opened the day at 51.15, better than the 51.25 in the previous session.
It traded between 51.00 and 51.155, resulting in an average of 51.088.
Volume reached USD744.96 million, lower than the USD910.96 million at the end of last week.
Relatively, the main equities gauge finished the day’s trade at 8,365.29 points, up 2.74 percent or 223.47 points.
Other counters also ended with gains, with the All Shares rising by 2.007 percent, or 99.26 points, to 5,043.96 points.
Financials posted the highest increase among the sectors with 3.38 percent, and was followed by the Holding Firms, 3.33 percent; Property, 1.88 percent; Industrial, 1.84 percent; Services, 1.14 percent; and Mining and Oil, 1.07 percent.
Volume reached 1.59 billion shares amounting to PHP8.5 billion.
Advancers led decliners at 124 to 62; while 56 shares were unchanged.
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