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At the close of this week’s first trading day, the Philippine Stock Exchange index (PSEi) shaved 18.89 points to settle at 5,127 as the industrial and financial sectors posted strong gains to partly offset declines of share prices of holding firms, services, mining, and property sectors. The 3.3 billion shares traded on Monday were valued at P7.6 billion. Trading activity was dominated by foreign investors. Foreign buying amounted to P3.4 billion while foreign selling totaled P3.35 billion. There were 11 block sales—of which the largest was for 1,000,007 shares of DMCI Holdings worth P55.8 million. Three blocks of Meralco shares totaling 488,400 shares were sold and the aggregate amount was P126.5 million. There were also 30 shares of PLDT sold for P82.08 million. Meanwhile, Asian shares edged higher and the dollar was steady against the yen on Monday after the U.S. market hit an almost four-year high last week and with higher European stocks reflecting signs of growing stability in the euro zone.
With investors buoyed by those positive signs, financial spread bets are for major European markets to open 0.2 to 0.4 percent higher.
The MSCI Asia Pacific ex-Japan index inched up 0.2 percent after last week's modest 0.8 percent gain.
Japan's Nikkei was also up 0.2 percent, at 10,151, having earlier reached an 8-month high above 10,172 with slower-moving blue-chips being bought up.
"U.S. economic data continues to be solid," said Fujio Ando, senior managing director at Chibagin Asset Management in Tokyo.
"Confidence in the U.S. economy will push the Nikkei up to 10,200 even this week, although we will have to watch the housing data this week," Ando said.
Global economic growth will slow this year, with the United States looking much improved but risks still to the downside as Europe's financial markets remain fragile, Zhu Min, deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said on Monday.
Zhu, a former deputy governor of the Chinese central bank, was speaking a day after IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said the global economy had stepped back from the brink and signs of stabilisation were emerging.
Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Glenn Stevens said on Monday the economy was not doing too badly, but cautioned that Europe's debt problems were still a global risk. He was upbeat on the outlook for China and the rest of Asia. — with Reuters/ELR, GMA News
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