By Denise A. Valdez, Reporter

THE Philippines’ main index showed its first climb after three days on Friday as investors took cues on the mild improvement in the Philippines’ factory output for December.

The 30-member Philippine Stock Exchange index (PSEi) gained 97.26 points or 1.26% to close at 7,839.79, while the broader all shares index added 36.79 points or 0.80% to 4,655.54.

Darren T. Pangan, trader at Timson Securities, Inc., said the gains in the market were fueled by “positive reports regarding our IHS Markit Philippines Manufacturing PMI (purchasing managers’ index),” which came out on Thursday.

IHS Markit reported factory activity in the Philippines in December improved to 51.7 from 51.4 in the earlier month, driven by growing demand and higher exports. This may have drawn investors to local shares despite Friday’s generally thin trading, Mr. Pangan said.

Aside from the manufacturing report’s impact, optimism on the decision of China’s central bank to cut its reserve ratio requirement may have also affected the local bourse on Friday, Mr. Pangan said.

“Most global markets’ rally yesterday (Thursday) due to China’s reduction of their banks’ reserve cash requirements may have spilled some positive sentiment into our market today as we experienced profit-taking the day before,” he said.

Wall Street was a party at the maiden day of trading for 2020: the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite indices all grew 1.16%, 0.84% and 1.33%, respectively.

In the Asia-Pacific region, trading on Friday was mixed: Japan’s Nikkei 225 and Topix indices shaved 0.76% and 0.68%, respectively, joining Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index in shedding 0.32%. But advancers were Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 index, which added 0.64% and South Korea’s Kospi index, which inched up 0.06%.

Back home, all subsectors ended in green territory, led by industrial, which jumped 196.67 points or 2.07% to 9,684.14 and holding firms, which gained 114.19 points or 1.52% to 7,631.72.

Property increased 28.55 points or 0.69% to 4,173.67, followed by services, which added 12.97 points or 0.85% to 1,547.27. Financials grew 12.47 points or 0.68% to 1,844.48 and mining and oil climbed 10.80 points or 0.14% to 8,020.76.

Some 659.2 million issues worth P5.6 billion were traded on Friday, or lower than Thursday’s 945.64 million issues worth P4.48 billion.

Stocks that advanced outnumbered those that declined, 108 against 68, as 59 names ended unchanged.

Foreign investors remained sellers, but net foreign selling was trimmed to P157.87 million on Friday from Thursday’s P852.24 million.

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