Source - (philstar.com)
MANILA, Philippines (Xinhua) - The Philippine stock market closed lower Monday tracking the US market's decline.
The bellwether Philippine Stock Exchange index retreated by 0. 67 percent or 20.73 points to 3,048, while the all share index was down by 0.59 percent or 11.46 points to 1,902.52.
Only one of the six counters tumbled. Industrial shares slipped by 1.39 percent or 64.65 points to 4,572.77 pulled down by Manila Electric Co.(Meralco) which closed lower by 3.07 percent to P221 ($4.61) per share.
Mining and oil shares rose thanks to the strong close of Philex Mining Corp. Philex ended 4.28 percent higher to finish at 18.25 pesos (0.38 US dollar) per share. The index closed up 3.32 percent or 382.45 points to 11,895.23.
Trading was below average where only a total of 2.28 billion shares valued at P2.8 billion ($59.3 million) changed hands.
Foreign investors reverted to the selling side with a net foreign selling of P375 million ($7.94 million).
A total of 55 issues slipped while 46 tumbled and 63 stocks were unchanged.
"The Philippine market opened marginally on the upside on Monday but spent the rest of the session in the red, tracking the Dow Jones's industrial drop on Friday," Justino B. Calaycay of local brokerage Accord Capital Equities Corp. said in his daily stock market comment.
The US market was down for the third time on Friday as concerns over the health of the US economy lingers.
But Calaycay said Monday's decline in local bourse is " reasonable" considering there was not much news locally or overseas that could have influenced the local market.
Technical indicators also show that investors are not willing to wait for the market to break into the overbought level before shifting to a sell bias that pulled the index down.
Stocks in the 30-company index closed lower, although heavyweight Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. was spared and did not move at P2,545 ($53.93) per share.
