PSE index drops 2.28% on profit taking

The Philippine Stock Exchange index dropped 2.28 percent in moderately active trading Tuesday, dragged by profit taking across the board after six successive trading days of advances. That stocks on Wall Street took a beating overnight and the hostage-taking in Manila ended in a bloody siege that killed mostly Hong Kong tourists in Manila’s Rizal Park late Monday helped create an atmosphere filled with negative sentiment, said Tess Ylagan, a trader of BDO Securities Inc. Ayala Land Inc. (ALI), a respective property development concern, was sold down to an extent that could have been responsible for half of the market's decline Tuesday, analysts said. The issue, which forms part of the PSEi, dropped 15 percent to close at P14 per share. Nobody knew as of the 12:10 p.m. closing time what really happened to ALI. "It could have been a mistake, a trader’s error," Ylagan said, "because that wasn't a normal behavior for such a stock as ALI." The PSEi lost 82.74 points or 2.28 percent to close at 3,530.49. More than 896.79 million shares valued at P4.204 billion changed hands. Losers led winners 102 to 27, while 39 issues closed unchanged. Right now the index’s round support is at 3,400, Ylagan said. —VS. GMANews.TV