Index stays in red on heavy foreign selling

MANILA, Philippines — The benchmark Philippine Stock Exchange index remained in negative territory yesterday on the back of heavy foreign selling, shedding 73.44 points or 0.96 percent to finish at 7,529.54 while the broader All Shares index lost 36.17 points or 0.78 percent to end at 4,593.18.

“The weakness from the peso really did a number on the index as the PSEi saw P2.2 billion of net foreign selling today,” said Gio Perez of Papa Securities.

He said foreigners have effectively taken out what they bought last year as year to date net foreign selling reached P58.5 billion versus 2017’s net foreign buying of P56.2 billion.

 The PSEi fell as much as 123.41 points to its intraday low of 7,479.57, before closing slightly higher at 7,529.54.

Most indexes were down except for the holding firms which managed to rise by 0.11 percent

Total value turnover, meanwhile, reached P12.310 billion but this was due to a scheduled rebalancing in other markets.

Market breadth was negative, 110 to 76 while 57 issues were left unchanged.

Moving forward, Perez said the index may fall below 7,500 again soon.

“Nevertheless, we look to 7,457 or this year’s low, for guidance as the initial support for next week,” Perez said.