The stock market rose Friday on bargain-hunting, buoyed by reports that the government was considering measures to address rising prices.
The Philippine Stock Exchange Index gained 59.84 points, or 0.8 percent, to 7,819.39 on a value turnover of P5.7 billion. Gainers overwhelmed losers, 126 to 67, with 51 issues unchanged.
Speaker Gloria Macapagal Arroyo recommended at least five measures to address inflation during a recent meeting with the country’s top economic managers, even as the House committee on ways and means approved a bill lowering corporate income taxes and amending other provisions of the Tax Code.
Metropolitan Bank & Trust Co., the second-biggest lender in terms of assets, climbed 3.7 percent to P76, while Aboitiz Equity Ventures Inc., which is into power generation and distribution, banking, food and infrastructure, advanced 3.3 percent to P61.55.
PXP Energy Corp., which has an exploration permit in West Philippine Sea, increased 5.5 percent to P14.24, while Transpacific Broadband Group International Inc. jumped 10.5 percent to P0.63.
The rest of Asian equities were mixed on Friday after another painful week as fears of an all-out trade war between Beijing and Washington keep investors on edge, while China’s stock market was toppled by Japan as the world’s number two.
Hong Kong lost 0.2 percent in the afternoon and Shanghai sank one percent, after both swung in and out of positive territory through the day, while traders on the mainland largely brushed off promises of government support to the struggling economy.
Adding to the pain of recent losses, China’s stock market was overtaken as the world’s second-biggest by Japan’s Friday, having been hit by trade war fears and slowing economic growth.
Tokyo ended up 0.1 percent, while Sydney edged down 0.1 percent and Singapore slipped 0.2 percent.
Seoul, Wellington, Taipei and Mumbai were all higher.
While Apple provided a boost for Wall Street after hitting the $1-trillion market capitalization mark, the prospect of the world’s top two economies exchanging painful tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of goods is stunting optimism.
Shares, which have been on the slide for several weeks owing to the increasingly heated trade row, took another hit this week when the White House said it was considering more than doubling threatened tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese imports.
Beijing responded by saying it would not give in to “blackmail.”
“There are genuine concerns about this trade war underlying markets, which makes any genuine retaliation from China, rather than the current rhetorical approach, an issue for markets,” said Greg McKenna, chief market strategist at AxiTrader.
However, while he warned “the risks of escalation remain high”, he added that “the market still thinks (the latest US threat) is just a negotiating tactic.”
Bloomberg News figures showed Chinese stocks were worth $6.09 trillion, compared with $6.17 trillion in Japan. The US market is worth $31 trillion. With AFP
