STOCKS posted losses on Tuesday amid continued fears of a spillover of the Turkish lira crisis.
The bellwether Philippine Stock Exchange index (PSEi) fell 1.4% or 107.49 points Tuesday, August 14, to close at 7,527.78. The broader all-shares index also declined by 1.15% or 53.61 points to 4,578.92.
“The local market continued to slump, influenced again from the Turkey contagion and continued its second consecutive day of a massive drop-off,” Regina Capital Development Corp. Managing Director Luis A. Limlingan said in a mobile phone message on Tuesday.
Turkey’s central bank has rolled out an emergency plan to ensure economic stability as the lira opened the week slumping to new record lows. The measures include providing “all the liquidity the banks need” and continuous monitoring of the situation.
Meanwhile, the meeting between US National Security Advisor John R. Bolton and Turkish Ambassador to the US Serdar Kilic yielded news of the possible release of the detained American pastor.
“This news gave some support to the market. [The Turkish lira] tried to recover earlier losses but failed,” Mr. Limlingan added, noting that the decline across the US stocks also aggravated the situation.
US stocks dropped on Monday as global jitters from Turkey’s plummeting currency spread to Wall Street, with the S&P 500 and the Dow falling for the fourth session in a row.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 125.44 points or 0.5% to 25,187.70; the S&P 500 lost 11.35 points or 0.4% to 2,821.93; and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 19.40 points or 0.25% to 7,819.71.
For his part, Jervin S. de Celis, trader at Timson Securities, Inc., said the increase in Chinese firms in the MSCI World Index also contributed in the market’s movement.
“Since the MSCI index is an important index of fundamentally sound stocks for investors, the addition of new “choice” to invest in may have urged investors to shift funds to the new entries,” Mr. De Celis said in a mobile message on Tuesday.
The MSCI is a broad global equity index that covers large and mid-cap equity performance across 23 developed markets.
Back home, all sector counters declined on Tuesday.
Property saw the biggest losses, shedding 1.92% or 72.62 points to close at 3,705.64; mining and oil slid 1.79% or 183.57 points to 10,058.91; financials fell 1.67% or 30.77 points to 1,801.89; holding firms lost 1.28% or 96.33 points to 7,409.36; services dropped 1.1% or 16.8 points to 1,504.67; and industrials went down 0.44% or 49.31 points to finish the session at 10,950.44.
Losers outnumbered advancers, 141 to 60, while 41 issues were unchanged.
Value turnover reached P5.31 billion as 1.34 billion shares switched hands on Tuesday, up slightly from Monday’s P5.17 billion.
Foreigners continued to dump their shares, logging net sales of P1.47 billion, significantly higher than the P830.21-million net outflow recorded on Monday. — Janina C. Lim with Reuters

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR