Local shares join regional slump after Wall Street fall

MANILA, Philippines — Local shares crashed and burned on Friday, wiping out gains in the past days and tracking a regional slump that trailed losses on Wall Street.

The Philippine Stock Exchange index dive-bombed 3.64% to close at 6,489.65. The broader All Shares index plunged 2.32% with all sub-indices glowing in red.

Shares in the holding firms sub-index led the pack of losers, shedding 5.11% of its value.

For Luis Limlingan, head of sales at local brokerage Regina Capital, the bloodbath reflected the gloomy sentiment across Asian equities as Wall Street failed to push up. 

“Following a meteoric rise in the market, investors finally decided to cash in to lose the week with majority of the regional declining,” he said in a Viber message. 

Hernan Segovia, a trader at Summit Securities, agreed with Limlingan’s assessment. 

“It’s like the bears are back, but nah. I think the market did a pullback, albeit painful,” he said. 

Segovia said that the local bourse “came in too fast to test the waters” at the 6,800 level, which was his yearend forecast. 

“Then we have SM as PSE heavyweight trying the psycho 1,000 mark only to waterfall back to 900. And lately, we have seen fundies doing a market on close buy ups a whole lot this week,” Segovia added.

The trader noted that the support level is currently pegged at 6,200. 

Investors remain on the lookout for indications of China easing pandemic curbs after widespread protests around the world’s second-largest economy broke out in past days. The pro-democracy demonstrations proved to be a bright spot for onlookers, since protests of this magnitude were last seen in 1989 before it was snuffed by the Communist party. 

On the one hand, regional equities faced slumps to end weekly trading. Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo, Sydney, Seoul, Mumbai, Bangkok, Singapore, Taipei, Wellington, and Jakarta all fell.

At home, foreign investors sold P846.26 million more shares than they bought in the local stock market. A total of million 874.3 million stocks, valued at P6.32 billion, switched hands on Friday. — with AFP