Wednesday, July 21, 2004

July 21 Philippine Stock Market Commentary

July 21 Philippine Stock Market Commentary
 
Inspired by the yesterday’s gains in Wall Street, Global bourses picked up the buoyant sentiment to likewise register advances.   As of this writing, European bourses, which just opened, are trading mostly positive while closing Asian bourses are ALL in the green.  Leading the region’s top winner are South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Thailand with more than 1% gains.
 
The Philippines similarly was on the optimistic side of the trade up .41% or 6.32 points as chirpy local investors bought into the broader market.  Except for BPI, which grew by a hefty 2.46%, most of the blue chip issues reported scant gains led by PLDT up .42%, Globe Telecoms higher .63% and San Miguel ‘B’ added .73% while the rest of the heavyweights were unchanged. 
 
On the surface, volume turnover improved moderately to P 579.251 million but excluding cross transactions net turnover amounted to a niggardly growth of only P 312.798 million.  Cross transactions accounted for 56.64% of the aggregate output with ISM Communications and Salcon Power taking up the bulk.
 
While market breadth was palpably bullish, advancing issues trounced declining issues 46 to 19 or more than 2 to 1 and major subindices were mostly positive except for the OIL and PROPERTY index, foreign investors unassumingly disposed of the major index issues, as 6 of 8 heavyweights posted minor to moderate outflows. 
 
Foreign participation in the local trading continued to manifest declines as foreign share to total output contracted to only 39.94%.  Yes, net foreign money flows reported a positive P 13.091 million although this largely comes from the cross trades of ISM Communications shares which reportedly sold 7.6% of the its outstanding shares owned by Philweb to a Hong Kong publicly listed wholly owned subsidiary.  
 
Again the thrusts of the local investors have been on SPECULATIVE ISSUES which can be viewed from the list of top gainers.  Gotesco B and Premier Entertainment were up 50% a piece followed by Gotesco local (+45.83%), Crown Equities Inc (+26.66%), EIB Realty (+25%), Uniwide Holdings (+ 21.42%), APC Group (+20%), Global Equities Inc (+20%) Vitarich Corp (+18.51%) and Macroasia Corp (+18.29%). 
 
Today’s number of traded issues hit more than the 2 1/2 year record high of 124 issues.  Once again this manifest underlying bullishness by the locals, however due to the dearth of volume the advances have not been translated into substantial growth in the major composite index but were distributed among the third tier issues represented by the enormous broad market gap between advancing and declining issues.
 
US FED chair Greenspan’s recent optimistic assessments of the US economy gave reprieve to the oversold US markets that spilled over to the world.  Actually Greenspan’s appearances have sparked rallies in almost countless occasions since.  Today, Greenspan is scheduled to appear at the Congress after yesterday’s Senate Banking Committee appearance and should provide some impetus to sustain yesterday’s gains.  However, over the longer period the economic health of the largest economy of the world, the sustainability of corporate earnings growth and the ramifications of the Fed’s actions to restore normalcy to its short end interbank rates and the residual effects of the reduced fiscal stimulus are just some of the most important variables in play that would shape the US and affect the sentiments of the global financial markets.  Stay tuned. 
  



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