By Joann Villanueva/PNA
MANILA — Rising hopes for a US-China trade agreement continue to boost sentiments and allowed the main equities gauge to finish Monday’s trading up but the peso closed sideways against the greenback as the trading week went off to a start.
Philippine Stocks Exchange index (PSEi) rose 0.44 percent, or 33.70 points to 7,675.47 points.
“Local stocks rebounded on improved market sentiment brought by positive trade news,” BPI Financial Markets Research said in a report.
Most of the counters tracked the main index, with the broader All Shares rising 0.40 percent, or 19.04 points, to 4,748.97 points.
Financials registered the highest increase at 1.09 percent and was followed by Property, 0.35 percent; Holding Firms, 0.32 percent; Industrial, 0.24 percent; and Services, 0.02 percent.
Only the Mining and Oil ended the day with loss after dropping 2.52 percent
Volume reached 1.02 billion shares amounting to PHP6.21 billion.
However, losers led gainers at 103 to 94 while 52 shares were unchanged.
Relatively, the peso ended the day’s trade at 51.72 to a US dollar from 51.7 Friday last week.
BPI attributed this to profit-taking after its recent rally.
For the day, the peso opened the trade at 51.765 from the previous session’s 51.86.
It traded between 51.84 and 51.68, resulting to an average of 51.761.
Volume for the day reached nearly USD1.1 billion from USD872.31 million at the end of last week.
