MANILA – Both the Philippine bourse and the peso ended with gains for the second consecutive day Wednesday, mirroring the bullish sentiment at Wall Street.
The Philippine Stock Exchange index (PSEi) rose by 1.61 percent, or 112.66 points, to 7,099.68 points.
Landbank market economist Guian Dumalagan, in a report, also attributed the positive close of local markets to US President Donald Trump’s “calm reaction to yesterday’s reported death of a Washington Post reporter.”
Reports said Trump had a talk with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman after the latter’s meeting with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Riyadh. The President later tweeted that the Crown Prince “totally denied any knowledge of what took place in their Turkish Consulate.”
Trump's reaction was apparently seen by the market as a sign that a direct political confrontation between the world's biggest economy and the oil rich kingdom has been staved off.
With these factors, risk-on sentiment in the local market were up, resulting to the general positive sentiment.
Thus, All Shares increased by 1.23 percent, or 52.57 points, to 4,342.28 points.
Mining and Oil led the sectors with a jump of 2.74 percent and was closely followed by the Financials, 2.73 percent; and Industrial, 2.70 percent.
Property rose by 1.40 percent, Holding Firms, by 0.86 percent; and Services, 0.46 percent.
However, volume remains thin at 527.6 million shares amounting to PHP5.7 billion.
Gainers continue to led losers at 129 to 57 while 46 shares were unchanged.
Also, the peso ended the day at 53.89 from 53.96 a day ago, which a trader said benefited from the positive close of the PSEi.
The local unit opened the day at 53.87, better than the 54.03 Tuesday.
It traded between 53.95 and 53.84, resulting to an average of 53.891.
Volume reached USD872.95 million, higher than day-ago’s USD777.8 million.
The currency pair is seen to trade between 53.90 and 54.10 Thursday. (PNA)
