MANILA – The Philippine peso improved against the greenback for the second-day in a row Wednesday as dealers take profit while the Philippine Stock Exchange index (PSEi) ended its five-day rally.
The local currency finished the day at 52.10 from 52.24 Tuesday, which a trader attributed to investors’ decision to take profit of the US currency’s strength in the past days.
It opened the day at 52.165, way better than its 52.28 start in the previous session.
It traded between 52.21 and 52.06, resulting in an average of 52.12.
Volume for the day reached USD965.95 million, lower than the previous day’s USD977.8 million.
The trader expects the local unit to trade between 52.10 and 52.30 to the dollar Thursday.
On the other hand, PSEi shed 1.25 percent, or 109.05 points, to 8.613.65 points, which a trader attributed to investors’ decision to wait for the release of the minutes of Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) policy meeting last January 30-31.
The trader said the US economy has been churning out good economic data in recent weeks and markets expect these for the Fed to start delivering the expected three rate increases this year.
The next Fed meeting is scheduled on March 20-21 and economists expect a possible rate hike that month.
Pending the release of the report later in the day, however, investors decided to stay at the sidelines.
With this, most of the indices finished in the red with the broader All Shares shedding 0.15 percent, or 7.62 points, to 5,122.17 points.
Four of the sectors followed, led by the Property, which fell 1.38 percent. Industrial, Holding Firms, and Financials dropped by 1.30 percent, 1.09 percent, and 1.04 percent, respectively.
Volume during the day reached 1.92 billion shares amounting to PHP9.5 billion.
Losers led gainers at 128 to 82 while 46 shares were unchanged.
