By Joann Villanueva/Philippine News Agency
MANILA — Philippines main equities gauge improved for the second consecutive day Thursday and the peso recovered as foreign buying in the local stock market picked up.
The Philippine Stock Exchange index (PSEi) rose 0.61 percent, or 47.46 points, to 7,894.45 points.
“Local stocks held onto previous gains as market players evaluated the country’s fundamentals ahead of major local data releases in the coming weeks,” BPI Research said in a report after the day’s trading.
For one, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) is scheduled to release the April 2019 inflation figure on May 7.
With a lack of leads to guide trading during the day, most of the counters tracked the PSEi, with the All Shares up by 0.45 percent, or 21.61 points, to 4,867.66 points.
Property also improved and rose 2.17 percent, Services by 0.63 percent and Financials by 0.53 percent.
On the other hand, Mining and Oil declined by 0.66 percent, Holding Firms by 0.42 percent; and Industrial by 0.12 percent.
Volume is still thin at 743.97 million shares amounting to PHP6.5 billion.
Gainers finally exceeded losers at 96 to 92 while 57 shares were unchanged.
Relatively, the peso ended the day at 52.14 from 52.23 a day ago.
It opened at 52.32, weaker than its 52.14 start in the previous session.
It strengthened to 52.13 but also moved to 52.36, resulting to an average of 52.246.
Volume reached USD961 million, lower than the USD1.37 billion in the previous session.
The currency pair is seen to trade between 52.05 and 52.25 Friday.
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