Stocks retreated Tuesday, ending a three-day advance as investors took profit ahead of the Lent holiday.
The Philippine Stock Exchange index, the 30-company benchmark, shed 34 points, or 0.5 percent, to close at 7,342.03. The bellwether, however, was still up 5.6 percent since the start of the year. Trading will be closed Thursday and Friday.
The heavier index, representing all shares, also dropped 17 points, or 0.4 percent, to settle at 4,208.61, on a value turnover of P7.3 billion. Losers outnumbered gainers, 113 to 79, while 32 issues were unchanged.
Seven of the 20 most active stocks ended in the green, led by oil player Petron Corp., which climbed 2.7 percent to P10.58. SM Prime Holdings Inc., the real estate arm of tycoon Henry Sy, gained 1.8 percent to P22.55. Alliance Global Group Inc., the investment company of tycoon Andrew Tan, added 0.4 percent to close at P16.06.
Meanwhile, Tokyo stocks rose sharply on Tuesday, fueled by weakness in the yen, but broader Asian markets were subdued as last week’s rally waned.
A sense of stability has returned to global markets following the Federal Reserve’s decision last week to scale back its forecasts on hiking borrowing costs, after a tumultuous first two months of the year.
On Tuesday, however, most regional markets retreated in thin trading, with no clear driver ahead of the long Easter break, which starts Friday.
“We’re at a key junction where we need to see fresh news to push the market higher,” Chris Weston, Melbourne-based chief market strategist at IG, told Bloomberg News.
“Central banks have put in place measures that helped subdue market volatility,” he said.
“However, the market is at risk of going into some sort of consolidation given the extremely low volatility.”
The dollar held firm against the yen on Tuesday, changing hands at 112.10 yen from 111.94 yen late Monday in New York and after briefly touching 110.67 yen last week, its lowest since October 2014.
In Tokyo, automakers were among the biggest gainers, as the weaker yen increases the value of their profits being repatriated in March ahead of the April start of the financial year.
Tokyo’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index closed 1.94 percent higher as trading resumed after a long weekend, and Seoul was up 0.35 percent, while Singapore and Wellington were also higher.
However, China’s key Shanghai Composite Index ended down 0.64 percent, Hong Kong slipped 0.09 percent and Sydney and Taipei were in the red as well.
Chinese shares surged on Monday after authorities relaxed rules on margin trading for the first time since last summer’s collapse in mainland markets.
Margin trading, whereby investors only need to deposit a small proportion of the value of their trades, was behind a boom that sent the Shanghai bourse up 150 percent in 12 months, before it plummeted from last June after regulators moved to tighten rules on the practice.
The dollar also held firm against the euro on Tuesday, after two Fed officials suggested the US central bank may raise key interest rates at its next meeting in April.
San Francisco Fed president John Williams and Atlanta Fed president Dennis Lockhart said Monday that recent economic data may justify additional policy tightening after the central bank raised rates in December — its first hike in almost a decade.
“There is sufficient momentum evidenced by the economic data to justify a further step at one of the coming meetings, possibly as early as the meeting scheduled for end of April,” said Lockhart.
On oil markets the main US benchmark West Texas Intermediate held on to gains above $41.
with AFP, Bloomberg
