Peso trips on stock market outflows

The Philippine peso weakened against the US dollar on Monday, triggered by fund outflows from the stock market.

The local currency lost 16 centavos to close at P53.44:$1 from P53.28 on Friday.

“It continues to see weakness and the primary reason is still the same. There‘s still outflows, as you can see, the stock market’s still down,” Benedict Chan, treasurer and head of the Treasury Group at China Bank Corp., said.

The benchmark PSEi plunged by more than 1 percent on Monday, dragged by an absence of positive catalysts.

Foreign funds bought P3.303 billion worth of shares and sold P3.705 billion for a net selling position of P401.527 million. —VDS, GMA News