By Arra B. Francia, Reporter
EQUITIES slipped on Monday as the market consolidated amid a lack of catalysts.
The bellwether Philippine Stock Exchange index (PSEI) snapped its four-day winning streak Monday, July 16, dropping 29.74 points or 0.4% to end at 7,369.44, while the broader all-shares index gave up 12.29 points or 0.27% to finish at 4,462.60.
“The market is still consolidating and trying to test the 7,400. It’s range-bound between 7,400 and 7,200. So it has to test and trade within that range first, before it tests new highs,” First Metro Investment Corp. Vice-President Cristina S. Ulang said in an interview on the sidelines of the company’s midyear economic briefing in Makati City. “That’s the behavior of the market, it’s just consolidating.”
For Regina Capital Development Corp. Managing Director Luis A. Limlingan, a “[l]ack of catalysts remained the culprit once again, as some investors were profit taking after the release of China GDP (gross domestic product) and renewed fears of an escalating trade war.”
“Value turnover remained weak as there were not enough leads to push the index past the 7,400 resistance,” Mr. Limlingan said in a mobile message.
The PSEi shrugged off gains seen in Wall Street last week, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbing 0.38% or 94.52 points to 25,019.41 last Friday.
Most Asian indices also closed lower on Monday, following the release of China’s latest GDP growth figure which came in at 6.7% — meeting market expectations, but still slower than the preceding quarter’s 6.8%.
Back home, the industrial counter was the lone winner among the sectoral indices, gaining 23 points 0.22% to 10,470.73.
Holding firms led losers, shedding 55.20 points or 0.75% to 7,249.75, followed by property’s 23.81-point or 0.65% drop to 3,589.11; mining and oil’s 60.48-point or 0.62% fall to 9,659.65; services’ 2.72-point or 0.19% decline to 1,429.19; and financials’ 1.91-point or 0.10% dip to 1,823.83.
Some 919.84 million issues worth P4.28 billion switched hands, compared to Friday’s 1.49 billion stocks worth P5.46 billion. Decliners outpaced advancers, 90 to 82, while 55 names were unchanged.
Foreigners remained in selling position for the eighth straight trading day, with net selling accelerating to P279.31 million on Monday from Friday’s P37.78 million.
Half of Monday’s 20 most active stocks ended in negative territory, with Ayala Land, Inc. losing 1.46% to P37.10 each; Megawide Construction Corp. falling 1.75% to P19.04; BDO Unibank, Inc. dipping by 0.78% to P127.90 each, while SM Investments Corp. plunged 1.64% to P901 each.
Shares of Metropolitan Bank & Trust Co. were the most actively traded, gaining 0.43% to P69.80 each, after the company clarified that talks of a P400-million branch fraud, as bared in a gossip piece, were false.

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