PSEi drops for 3rd straight day, plunges 4% amid global market meltdown

Philippine share prices succumbed to the global market meltdown, plunging for the third straight day on Tuesday. The bellwether 30-company Philippine Stock Exchange index slumped 174.21 points or 4.02 percent to 4,157.03 while the all shares fell 87.94 points or 2.94 percent to 2,906.18. Losers routed gainers 170 to 14 while 14 stocks closed unchanged. Volume traded reached 8.09 billion shares valued at P8.37 billion. "It may take a while before local investors will manage to shake off its own version of recession fears and keep focus on a still relatively rosy picture of the local economy, or at the very least, corporate earnings," said trader Justino Calaycay Jr. of Accord Capital Equities. Overnight, Wall Street fell with the Dow sliding 5.55 percent and Nasdaq giving up 6.90 percent. Save for Singapore, whose market is closed for its National Holiday, all other main indices in the region were trading significantly lower. As of mid-trade, Hong Kong and South Korea were leading the decline with 6.01 percent and 5.30 percent drop, respectively. Global investors have been spooked by the credit rating downgrade on the US and the debt crisis in the Eurozone. In the local bourse, all five top traded stocks for the day closed in the red. Telecommunications giant Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. dropped P118 or abour 5 percent to P2,244. Aboitiz Equity Ventures Inc., which holds the interests of the Aboitiz family, shed P1.30 or 3.25 percent at P38.65. Diversifying conglomerate San Miguel Corp. lost P5.10 or 4.28 percent at P114. Lepanto Consolidated Mining Co. slid P0.05 or 4 percent to P1.20. Alternative power producer Energy Development Corp.declined P0.28 or 4.35 percent to P6.15. -- CMA/OMG, GMA News