The local stock barometer climbed back to the 7,200 level on Monday as leading conglomerate SM Investments recouped most losses from Friday’s sell-off.
The main-share Philippine Stock Exchange index (PSEi) gained 86.82 points or 1.21 percent to close at 7,233.09 on the first day of the PSEi’s rebalancing.
All counters went up, led by holding firms, which firmed up by 1.9 percent due to SM’s rebound.
SM bounced by 7.76 percent to close at P645.50. To recall, SM slid by 9.24 percent last Friday as fund managers scrambled to realign their portfolios ahead of today’s main index rebalancing.
Effective today (Monday, March 13), SM’s weight (in PSEi) was reduced by 0.51 percent along with the removal of Emperador to accommodate the inclusion of Puregold with a 1-percent weight in the index. Ron Acoba, chief investment strategist at equities research provider Trading Edge, explained that the sharp drop seen on Friday was because index funds that track the PSEi appeared to be worth more than P100 billion which sold 0.5 percent of their SM shares at Friday’s closing.
When asked whether SM had bought back shares from the open market on Monday, SM investor relations chief Cora Guidote said the rebound by driven by bargain-hunting. “A lot of investors had been waiting for a buying window. Since the drop in shares last week was purely technical, investors took advantage,” Guidote said.
Apart from SM’s rebound, the upswing in the local market also reflected mostly firmer regional markets.
“After much market drama, another rate increase from the FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee) now looks like a forgone conclusion when the committee members meet later this week. This information is already being discounted into the market,” said Luis Gerardo Limlingan, managing director at Regina Capital Development.
In addition, Limlingan noted that US non-farm payrolls had increased by 235,000 in February with a 9,000 upward revision to the prior two months, moderately above consensus expectations. Meanwhile, he noted that US jobless ratio had edged down to 4.7 percent, one tenth below Fed officials’ estimate.
Read more: http://business.inquirer.net/226080/psei-back-7200-sm-rebounds
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