Record Philippine Stocks? Bear Markets Prevail Over the Industrial Commercial Sector! (52% of index and 64% of the industry!)

Have record Philippine stocks been for real?

Not according to market breadth/internals.

In fact, it’s been the opposite—bear markets have become a dominant force as I have shown here.

Over the past week, I have tallied chart conditions of firms under the banking-financial sector (index and non-index), the property, holding and service sectors. And they all reveal on the same story.

Bear markets have signified a MAJORITY of trading activities in the PSE. Most of them originated from early 2013.

Recent record stocks have been nothing more than engineered pumps on very select issues—specifically on firms with significant weighting on the index. Such manipulated concentrated pumps have been designed to create headline or symbolical effects.

Yet headlines have fantastically departed from activities in the overall sector.

And to add to these I present the charts of the Industrial Commercial sector.

First the categorization; firms under the index and the broader sector.

The components of the commercial industrial sector are energy, food, construction chemicals, electrical and other industries. Energy and Food have represented the biggest weights.

Legend and definition:

-Bear Market (bear): 20% decline from recent (mostly 2012-15) highs (red)

-Record highs (record): stock prices at all-time highs (green)

-Uptrend (UPT): stock price on an uptrend but at non record highs

-Sideways (sidew): neither a bear market nor an uptrend/record high

The PSE link on the industrial sector index can be found here.

The stated chart conditions have been based on May 12-13 closing prices.

In summary, record stocks constitute a mere 35% of index issues as against 52% in bear markets!!

The share of record stocks even shrinks to a shocking only 20% from the perspective of the overall industry as against a stunning 64% for the bears!!!

I wonder how many of those who bought into broad market issues above have been profiting? Do they ever ask why the disparity between what the headline says and what their stock performance have been?

Or has it been that because media and experts shout G-R-OW-T-H and C-O-N-F-I-D-E-N-C-E, they blindly or hypnotically echo the utterances of G-R-OW-T-H and C-O-N-F-I-D-E-N-C-E?

Because of space constraints, I publish only bear market charts of firms under the commercial industrial index in alphabetical order.

There are three issues in the industrial commercial sector afflicted by bear markets that are part of the PSEi benchmark: Emperador, Meralco and Petron. 

If I include the service sector’s BLOOM, and holding sector’s LTG, Metro Pacific and San Miguel, this makes 7 of the 30 issues or 23% of the Phisix in bear markets!

And there have been borderline issues as PLDT and AGI which seem as headed for the bear’s territory.

Does the above suggests of G-R-O-W-T-H and C-O-N-F-I-D-E-N-C-E?

Yet some record eh?