TRADING at the Philippine Stock Exchange during the last three trading days of the year is expected to remain biased toward the downside amid the continued outfl ow of foreign funds and the hawkish stance of the US Fed next year.
Analysts said the expected Santa Claus rally during the last trading days of the year would not likely happen this year amid this outlook.
Luis Limlingan, managing director at the Regina Capital Development Corp., however said the market could turn positive this week as long as the index stayed above between 6,550 and 6,500 points.
“Index’s high volatility conditions remain to be a big hurdle coming in to this week as we still expect intraday swings of 100 basis points. As such, any rallies this week should be considered as a selling trigger until clear reversal signals are spotted,” Limlingan said.
“Market volatility can be also utilized when entering short term positions but we strongly suggest putting tight stops for protection against sudden reversals which we expect to be commonplace even up to the first few weeks of 2017,” he added.
The PSEi last week plunged 4.2 percent to close at 6,563.67, while the broader All Shares Index declined 3.3 percent to P4.022.50 as global uncertainties arose following the policy normalization by the US Fed, keeping the investors sidelined The index year-to-date is now down 5.59 percent.
All sub-indices were also in red led by holding firms which was down 4.8 percent, property, which was lower by 4.6 percent and industrial which dropped 4.3 percent.
Foreign investors were net sellers this week by P4.8 billion as total foreign selling amounted to P4.8 billion against total foreign buying of P13.7 billion.
Weekly top price gainers were Italpinas Development Corp., which climbed 15.2 percent to P3.70 per share, Metro Retail Stores INc., which gained 6.8 percent to P3.90, and RFM Corp., which advanced 3.5 percent to P4.95 .
The weekly top price losers were led by PhilWeb Corp., which declined 10.4 percent to P11.20, Filinvest Land Inc., which dropped 10 percent to P1.54 and San Miguel Corp., which lost 9 percent to P91 apiece.
Wall Street stocks, meanwhile, finished modestly higher Friday, with pharmaceutical stocks gaining, but the Dow again fell short of 20,000 points in light trade ahead of the holiday weekend.
The Dow ended at 19,933.81, up 0.1 percent.
The broad-based S&P 500 advanced 0.1 percent to 2,263.79, while the tech-rich Nasdaq Composite Index climbed 0.3 percent to 5,462.69. With AFP