Market slow down seen resuming this week

MANILA, Philippines — The stock market is now a few days away from the ghost month of August, which may put market investors on the sidelines again.

 “The PSEi is currently up seven percent for the month. With two days left of trading in July, I will not be surprised if we see a pullback at the beginning of the week,” said Eagle Equities’ Chris Mangun.

Astro del Castillo of First Grade Finance Inc. said bargain hunting has resumed last week as seen in the index’s performance.

But Mangun said this was the pullback that was delayed from last week.

“The index cannot continue to maintain this momentum without relieving some pressure. Historically, during the month of August or ‘ghost month’ we have seen the index either stay flat or end the month down as the PSE has a lot of Chinese investors and they will be staying out of the market,” Mangun said.

At the same time, Mangun said while Chinese investors may stay away during the ghost month, other investors may still be interested after the index hit recent lows.

“This year is a very different situation as the index has just bottomed out in July. The index has just broken above the strong resistance at 7,500 and we shall see if this will get investors back into the market regardless of the ghost month,” Mangun said.

Global markets ended flat last week with several exceptions that did exceptionally well like the Dow and the Nikkei.

“The PSEi did extraordinarily well, up 301.77 points or 4.08 percent to close at 7,701.38. The market moved in one direction last week. Based on the technicals, there should have been a pullback on the last day of trading wherein we were down almost 80 points, however at the last 30 minutes of trading we saw a lot of buying which pushed the index up to maintain the current momentum. Value turnover for the week is starting to pick up with P28.12-billion traded. Several blue-chip issues were up more than five percent last week,” Mangun said.