July 14 Philippine Stock Market Commentary

July 14 Philippine Stock Market Commentary

Piltel stole the limelight from parent PLDT on a speculative buying frenzy, significantly higher for the third consecutive session on a spectacular intraday surge of 11.21%. PLTL accounted for 22.65% of today’s activities making it the heaviest traded issue surpassing its heavyweight counterparts.

As noted before domestic punters are very much agog on boosting issues with ‘underlying stories’, hence while the simmering telltale of SMART’s buying into PLTL have practically entranced the market, the general sentiment fell prey to continued selling pressures as investors probably went into a portfolio reshuffling. The key Philippine benchmark Phisix fell .44% or 7.69 points on selloffs by three index heavyweights, particularly Ayala Land (-1.85%), Globe Telecoms (-1.8%) and Bank of the Philippine Islands (-1.17%). The other index heavyweights were unchanged for the day.

The Phisix fell for its fifth successive day while the broader market’s climate remained bearish for the 6th straight session, although on a more subdued scale as decliners edged advancers by 32 to 25. Industry indices were all down except for the Phi-All, whose gain came from Manulife, the largest market cap of the said index. Local investors accounted for the majority 54.7% of today’s trade.

Foreign money depicted a net outflow of P 43.597 million, however P 40.556 million of which came from the special block sales of Equitable banking shares. On the broader front foreign money have accumulated more shares than it sold indicative of improving outlook in the immediate future.

With the much constrained selling as evidenced by the narrowing advance-decline margins plus improving accumulations by foreign money on the broader scale, Friday’s activities could probably show some bounce from the series of declines envisaged this week.

The Phisix seemingly shares the same sentiment with that of our neighbors. As of this writing, only Sri Lanka has had meaningful gains while Pakistan and Singapore are trading marginally higher; the rest of the region are all in the red.

Of today’s most winning issues aside from Steniel (+50%) and Fil Hispano (+16.47%) which scored highs on a single trade, the other more liquid advancers were Yuchengco construction company EEI (+16.66%), Senator Villar’s real estate flagship C & P Homes (+13.63%), Semirara makeover story majority shareholder DM Consunji (+10.71%), Yuchengco holding company House of Investments (+8.82%), foreign buying spurred Security Bank (+6.84%), new mining revival deal Abacus Mining B (+6.66%) and PLDT’s Pangilinan real estate and shipping company Metro Pacific (+6.45%) surfing on PLTL’s wave.