The week ahead

So Donald Trump won a second term, the PSEi flash-crashed below 7k--recovered--then weakly faded back below the line, the US Federal Reserve decided to cut interest rates by 25 basis points (75bp across two consecutive cuts), and the Philippine Statistics Authority reported that our Philippine GDP slowed dramatically to just 5.2% in Q3 due to the weather-related disruptions in the planting season and the weather-related disruptions in the harvest season. That was intense. So what does this week have in store?

> PH:  It’s earnings season, so we will continue to get a bunch of reports talking about Q3 data (or 9M if Q3 is weak). The PHINMA [PHN 19.94 ?0.3%; 10% avgVol] SRO offer period will start on Wednesday (and run through until November 19). The ALCPF shares from Ayala Corp [AC 692.00 ?1.8%; 119% avgVol] will list on Thursday. Finally, the MREIT [MREIT 13.62 ?0.9%; 54% avgVol] Q3 dividend ex-date is on Friday, so you’ll need to own your MREIT shares by end-of-day on Thursday if you want a piece of the dividend. Expect a dividend-sized price drop for MREIT on the ex-date. Don’t worry, that’s normal.

> INTERNATIONAL:  The US market is open on Monday despite the observance of Veterans Day, and we get US CPI data for October on Thursday morning and a new jobless claims report on Friday morning. 

MB BOTTOM-LINE:  I haven’t fully digested the meaning of the Trump win with respect to the relationship between the US and China, and how that might impact us. But time doesn’t stop to make sure everyone is caught up, so I’m doing my best to try and learn more about all of this in real-time. Of course, it’s difficult to predict what Trump might do, which is seemingly by design, so a lot of the time all this worrying feels foolish. My goal is just to try and have a handle on the high-level things because the “sig figs” don’t justify breaking out the decimal points just yet. As for how this week will go on the PSEi, from a pure vibes perspective, I haven’t talked to anybody who is confident about the short-term or the middle-term. Nearly everyone is like “Oh yeah, stuff will be pretty good in a year or two, no doubt”, but aside from a few associates who “bought the dip”, I’m not seeing much of that bull run bluster that we were getting a few weeks ago. Temporary pullback, or start of a longer leg down? I haven’t adjusted my holdings. My dividends are rebuying dividend-generating stocks here.

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