MANILA – The local main equities index ended its three-day slide on Tuesday as investors stayed at the sidelines amid concerns about the coronavirus pandemic.
The Philippine Stock Exchange index (PSEi) rose by 0.15 percent, or 9.91 points, to 6,766.83 points.
However, All Shares went down by 0.11 percent, or 4.45 points, to 4,074.95 points.
Most of the sectoral gauges tracked the main gauge, led by the Financials, which rose by 0.62 percent.
It was followed by the Holding Firms, 0.26 percent; Mining and Oil, 0.25 percent; Industrial, 0.18 percent; and Services, 0.11 percent.
Among the sectoral indexes, only the Property ended the trade on the negative after it shed 0.79 percent.
Volume reached 5.9 billion shares amounting to PHP19.02 billion.
Losers led gainers at 131 to 83, while 48 shares were unchanged.
“Philippine shares closed slightly up as a number of events kept investors on the sidelines,” Luis Limlingan, Regina Capital Development Corporation head of sales, said.
These events include the rise to Level 2 the alert status of Taal Volcano and authorities’ advice for people against going towards the volcano’s direction, as well as the rise of the daily coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) cases to around 3,000.
Limlingan said “investors were still digesting the news after the (US) Senate passed a USD1.9-trillion Covid-19 relief package, underlining a stock market rotation driven by the rising UST (US Treasury) yields.”
Meanwhile, the peso ended the day sideways against the US dollar at 48.48 from 48.56 a day ago.
It opened the trade at 48.655 and traded between 48.67 and 48.47.
Average level for the day stood at 48.544.
Volume rose to USD890.25 million from the previous day’s USD685.98 million. (PNA)
