MANILA, Philippines — Stock market investors are expected to keep a close watch on the corporate sector this week to help them determine their next move, traders said.
“The market will take its cue on a string of corporate earnings data and annual stockholders meetings,” said Edgar Lay, equity analyst at AB Capital.
He said last week’s decline was due to foreign outflows, which has reached P34 billion year-to-date.
“Local market slipped amid foreign outflows. The Philippine Stock Exchange index snapped a two-day winning streak as foreign outflows persisted. In fact, foreign transactions were net outflows for the 48th day in 52 days.
This is also the 11th consecutive week of net foreign outflows,” Lay said.
Among those which dragged down the market were SM Investments Corp. which dropped 4.86 percent, Ayala Land Inc. which shed 2.21 percent, and SM Prime which declined 1.89 percent.
Chris Mangun of Eagle Equities sees the market still on a consolidation mode.
“With the index barely holding on to a trading range between 7,900 and 8,000 last week, Mangun said this signals a beacon of hope that the market may find a bottom at these levels.
“Going into next week, I think we will continue to consolidate within this range. The other scenario is we break below it and test support at 7,700. I still think the market will find a bottom in the next few weeks. The key to the deal is volume. We need to see a pick-up in volume, if we are going to see this market recover. In the meantime, small to mid-cap companies will continue to be more profitable for retail investors,” he said.
The bourse traded in the red for most of the week except for Thursday when we saw the market gain more than 100 points. However, this was short lived as we saw a major sell-off on Friday which erased all of Thursday’s gains. Leisure & Resorts World was one of our biggest losers for the week as President Duterte said there would be no casinos to be built on the island of Boracay. There is no finality on this decision and we shall wait for more details on this,” Mangun said.