PSE index drops 1.6% on profit-taking

The Philippine Stock Exchange index continued to drop on Friday as investors scrambled to cash in on gains from last week’s rallies. The PSEi shed 67.73 points or 1.63 percent to close at 4,076.68, a 6-percent drop week-on-week. More than 1.369 billion shares valued at P4.637 billion changed hands. There were 110 decliners, 34 advancers, and 26 stocks unchanged. “Investors are still pocketing gains from those issues that have run up quite steeply last week," said analyst Martin Santos of First Metro Securities Brokerage Corp. Santos was referring to stocks such as DMCI Holdings Inc., International Container Terminal Services Inc., Metro Pacific Investments Corp., and Alliance Global Group Inc. The market has been waiting for a correction since it kept hitting all-time highs in the past few weeks, he added. Another factor affecting the market is the intervention of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) in the domestic foreign exchange market, Santos said. BSP Deputy Gov. Diwa Guinigundo has admitted that the central bank participates in the foreign exchange market “just to stabilize the peso." “We’ve been seeing foreign selling in the market for the whole week just as the central bank has helped weaken the peso toward the P44 level [on Friday]," Santos said. This may have prompted foreign funds to take even more profits, thus resulting in steep drop in share prices, he added. — JE/OMG, GMANews.TV