Growth concerns, trade talks dampen investors’ sentiments

The local currency ended the week’s first trading day at 52.8 from 52.515 against the greenback Friday last week. (Shutterstock Photo)

MANILA — China growth concerns coupled with a lack of positive developments in US-China trade talks, resulted in the sideways close for the Philippine peso and drop in the main stocks gauge Monday.

The local currency ended the week’s first trading day at 52.8 from 52.515 against the greenback Friday last week.

It was affected by the depreciation of the yuan, which in turn, was due to reports about China’s 6.

6 percent output in the 2018, the slowest since 1990, Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) Financial Markets Group Research said in its market report.

Amid the risk-off sentiment, the local currency opened the day at 52.6, sideways from the 52.4 start in the previous session.

Its opening level is the peso’s strongest level during the day while weakest is at 52.81, resulting to an average of 52.725.

Volume reached USD1.006 billion, way higher than the USD807.22 million at the end of last week.

The currency pair is seen to trade between 52.70 and 52.90 Tuesday.

Relatively, the Philippine Stock Exchange index (PSEi) gave up 0.49 percent, or 39.66 points, to 8,007.46 points.

Most of the other counters tracked the main gauge, with the broader All Shares down by 0.12 percent, or 5.92 points, to 4,799.00 points.

Services registered the highest drop among the sectors after it lost 1.80 percent.

It was followed by the Financials, 0.88 percent; Mining and Oil, 0.73 percent; Holding Firms, 0.51 percent; and Industrial, 0.20 percent.

Only the Property index ended the day with gains of 0.77 percent.

Volume reached 1.98 billion shares amounting to PHP5.7 billion.

Losers led gainers at 114 to 86 while 45 shares were unchanged.