Central banks can, and do, intervene to prop up stock markets and failing institutions. In 2008, the government rescued or supported AIG, Citigroup, and Bank of America, among others, when Congress approved the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). You may recall the banking emergency of March 2023, when regulators bailed out Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. It was great for the tech nerds; not so great for the average citizen—Doug Casey
PSEi 5,761: The Rotational Pump: When the Index Rises and
the Market Doesn’t
ICTSI sold off, five heavyweights took the baton, and the rest of the market was left on the bench.
The PSEi closed the week ending November 6 up 81.6 points, or 1.44%. Read the headline and you’d think the market improved. Read the internals and you find an index being held up while the market beneath it isn’t.
The Scorecard: an Advancing Index, a Declining Market
Figure 1
ICTSI fell 2.62%, taking 37.89 points off the index. Five of the top ten more than offset it: SM (+4.08%), BDO (+5.93%), BPI (+5.21%), Ayala Corp (+3.74%) and Meralco (+5.44%) contributed 91.61 points. The other constituents split the residual gains. Breadth among the 30 members was 22 advancers to 8 decliners, and the average member return was 1.52%. (Figure 1 upper chart)
Across the whole exchange, advancers numbered 364 and decliners 373 on the main board. On that count, more stocks fell than rose while the index gained.
Zoom out and the bounce looks smaller. The 5,761.95 close leaves the PSEi down ~8%+ over three months, 4.81% year to date, and about ~13+% below its 52-week high.
Participation was thin as well. Average daily main board volume fell 23.75% from Php 7.339B to Php 5.595B as of November 6. (Figure 1, lower graph)
Prices rose on less money.
Where the Money Actually Went
Relative to main board volume:
Figure 2
- Top 10 brokers: 65.8% last week, against a 2026 daily average above 62.66% in 2026.
- ICTSI alone: 27.47% daily average of 24.2% since July 1, 2026
- Top 3 banks: 17.4%, up from 12.2% the week before
- Top 10 most active issues: 69.2% vs daily average of 65.7% in 2026
- Top 20 most active issues: 83.65% vs daily average of 81.5% in 2026 (Figure 2, upper image)
This is structural, not a one-week blip.
The rally didn’t find buyers across the board. Turnover funneled into a few names.
Passing the Baton: From ICTSI To SM and the Banks
ICTSI’s weight in the PSEi has slipped to 24.74% from a record above 28% after the PSE feted its 2 trillion cap. Trading didn’t leave the index. It moved.
As of November 5, the top 5 (SM, BDO, BPI, SMPH and ICTSI) hold 55.33% of the PSEi’s free float market cap, and that share has risen for a fifth straight week.
The top 10 hold 73.5%, which makes the other 20 members benchwarmers.
The Sy Group’s free float share climbed from 22.61% to 23.25%, a seventh straight weekly increase.
Figure 3
The banks show the same pattern. Their share of the PSEi rose from a recent low of 18.6% to 19.51%. They hold 81.4% of the Finance index (November 6th), which gained 4% WoW, while their share of volume jumped from 12.2% to 17.4%. (Figure 3, upper diagram)
The pumping focus moved from one big cap to several, and the index kept its shape.
The PSEi is a free float cap-weighted benchmark, not a measure of the average listed company. That is what makes the trick possible: heavyweights can take turns carrying the index while the rest of the market struggles.
121 Brokers, 280 Issues, A Handful Of Winners
The PSE’s Q3 infographic lists 121 trading participants and 280 listed companies. (Figure 3, lower image)
When the top 10 brokers handle 60-65% of a thin turnover, the other 111 split the leftovers.
When the top 20 issues take about 80% of volume, the other 260 are left barely any bids. A stock can stay listed while attracting almost no depth.
Two caveats. One investor can hold accounts at many brokers, so broker rankings understate real concentration. And many top brokers serve institutions more than retail, so some institutional flow may sit just outside the top 10 (e.g done thru trades).
What matters for the argument is that the top 10 broker names are nearly the same week after week, and so are the names behind the pre-closing pumps/dumps.
A market where the names and the timing repeat doesn’t behave like a crowd of independent buyers. That is circumstantial. It doesn’t prove coordination, and the same brokers could be executing for the same large clients. But it is a pattern, and patterns deserve explanation.
Support, Or Price Control?
Figure 4
In technical analysis, a level where buyers keep stepping in is called “support.” The PSEi has been holding off that 5,600-level since October—bouncing in what others would call trading range. (Figure 4, upper visual)
But in my framework, it is something else: a price control.
Any price held away from where voluntary buyers and sellers would put it must be defended by someone. The defender has to keep buying what real buyers won’t, and the inventory piles up on a balance sheet.
Genuine support is spontaneous: many independent participants each decide the price is attractive. What we see (the same few brokers, pre-closing activities, rotating bids) looks more like management than spontaneity.
I don’t know who they are, and it isn’t my job to find out. Forensics belong to the regulators: PSE, the SEC and the BSP. But our task is to trace the economic consequences. Call them the Philippine version of a “national team” (commonly alluded to unofficial stock market interventions by Chinese authorities) or the US “Plunge Protection Team,” the informal name for officials or allied institutions quietly propping up markets in a selloff.
The motives aren’t mysterious. Share prices serve as
collateral, so a falling index tightens credit for anyone who pledged shares.
There are also “confidence” goals: a healthy-looking market flatters the GDP narrative and the administration’s popularity.
Together, these motives can reinforce market illiquidity, as declining collateral values transmit financial stress from equity markets to the broader financial system.
No Free Lunch: Who Absorbs the Losses
There is precedent for political direction of public investment funds. During the pandemic crash, the finance chief ordered the GSIS and SSS to support the market. Pension funds are public institutions, and public institutions answer to political direction. (Figure 4, news clip image)
I can’t say whether the SSS is part of today’s national team, and the argument doesn’t depend on it. But its books show what an equity bet costs: its 2025 audited statements, as reported by the Commission on Audit, show about ₱39.99B in unrealized equity losses (cost ₱121.47B against market value ₱81.47B). These are paper losses, but they are paper losses on retirement money.
The constraint is general. Domestic savings are strained, deficits are persistent, and capital does not appear because someone wants an outcome.
A defended price makes the defenders absorb the difference as mark-to-market losses. Losses lead to more borrowing, tighter liquidity or dilution elsewhere, and eventually a solvency question. There is no free lunch.
No Free Lunch: Sauve Qui Peut
The rotational pump can momentarily preserve the benchmark's appearance of stability or what I call benchmarkism, but it cannot eliminate the underlying pressures. It merely transfers exposure to whoever supplies the capital.
The Philippine economy already faces strained domestic savings, twin (fiscal and trade) deficits, and competing demands for financing. Institutions cannot indefinitely absorb securities that the broader market is unwilling to buy at prevailing prices. As losses accumulate and liquidity tightens, the capacity to sustain support diminishes.
This is where historian Charles Kindleberger's account of financial crisis, sauve qui peut becomes relevant: the late-cycle transition from collective efforts to preserve market confidence toward an every-man-for-himself scramble for liquidity and balance-sheet survival.
The same institutions that participate in preserving the benchmark eventually have to protect their own balance sheets.
The PSEi rose for the week. But shrinking turnover, negative broader-market breadth, and concentrated trading reveal the fragility beneath the advance.
The preservation of the benchmark is not the preservation of the market. There is no free lunch.
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