Bargain hunting buoys index above 6,000

MANILA, Philippines - Late bargain hunting allowed the benchmark index to remain at the 6,000 level as it ended a six-day slump.

The Philippine Stock Exchange index (PSEi) rebounded from as low as 5,955.07 to close 0.35-percen or 21.11 points higher at 6,025.37, which is also the intraday high. The broader all shares index slipped 0.06 percent or 2.10 points to 3,679.57.

“The wipeout continued, saved only by a last-minute surge. The PSEi was poised to extend its slump to a seventh day, one day short of the longest losing streak posted in March this year, until buyers surfaced at the ‘trading-at-last’ phase,” said Justino Calaycay Jr., analyst at Accord Capital Equities Corp.

Top-traded JG Summit Holdings Inc.  dragged the market following a discounted share sale that raised P8.8 billion.

Wall Street provided little lift given the uptick in Dow Jones Industrial average while Standard & Poor’s 500 index remained above 1,800, Calaycay said.

Dow Jones picked up 0.1 percent or 7.77 points to 16,072.54 while S&P retreated 0.1 percent or 2.28 points to 1,802.48.

The local bourse bucked the trend in Asian stocks as Japan’s Nikkei 225 eased 0.67 percent or 103.89 points to 15,515.24 while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index 0.01 percent or 1.39 points to 23.685.84.

Locally, counters ended mixed, with the losers led by the service sector that fell 1.18 percent or 22.13 points to 1,846.85. But holding firms led the gainers, adding 1.04 percent or 57.27 points to 5,559.31.