Philippine shares took a beating Monday on massive regional selloff that saw the index plunging 4.3 percent.
The benchmark Philippine Stock Exchange index lost 261.34 points to close at 5,822.85, the lowest in 2.5 years.
The broader all-shares index also fell 4.03 percent, or 146.67 points, to settle at 3,496.77.
Analysts said the panic spread across the global markets amid global economic uncertainty.
Investors went defensive and opted to sell their stocks.
Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. chief economist Michael Ricafort said the bloodbath was largely due to reciprocal traffic implemented by the Trump administration, which is expected to trigger tariff wars and could lead to global recession.
All major sectors were dragged into the red. The mining and oil index was hit hardest, plunging 8.75 percent, followed by the industrial sector, which slumped 4.81 percent . The financial sector also posted a steep 4.60-percent drop.
Value turnover reached P12.6 billion.
Losers outnumbered gainers, 201 to 32, while 33 stocks were unchanged.
Shares of fastfood giant Jollibee Foods Corp. declined 9.46 percent to close at P203.
A global stock market rout deepened on Monday, with Hong Kong crashing as US President Donald Trump stood firm on tariffs despite fears that his trade war could spark a recession.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index sank 13.2 percent, its biggest drop since the 1997 Asian financial crisis, while Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 fell an eye-watering 7.8 percent.
Countries mostly have been scrambling to blunt the new US tariffs without retaliating, but Beijing is responding in kind, escalating the trade war between the world’s two biggest economies.
A 10-percent “baseline” tariff on imports from around the world took effect on Saturday but a slew of countries will be hit by higher duties from Wednesday, with levies of 34 percent for Chinese goods and 20 percent for EU products.
Beijing announced last week its own 34-percent tariff on US goods, which will come into effect on Thursday.
The tit-for-tat duties “are aimed at bringing the United States back onto the right track of the multilateral trade system”, Chinese vice commerce minister Ling Ji said.
“The root cause of the tariff issue lies in the United States,” Ling told representatives of US companies on Sunday, according to his ministry.
EU trade ministers will weigh their response at a meeting on Monday, with the bloc’s trade chief, Maros Sefcovic, telling reporters in Luxembourg that they were facing a “paradigm shift of the global trading system.” With AFP