Philippine bourse tumbles on profit-taking

Profit-taking due to overseas concerns pulled down the Philippine stock market on Monday. The bellwether Philippine Stock Exchange index lost 0.27 percent, or 17.47 points, to 6,407.52, while the broader all-share index slid by 0.23 percent, or 8.78 points, to 3,857.88. Trading volume reached 1.22 billion shares worth 7.74 billion pesos (173.49 million U.S. dollars) with 84 stocks declining, 74 advancing, and 55 were unchanged. Of the six counters, only the holding firm and the mining and oil sectors bucked the trend. "Trades started off on a relatively weaker footing dragged by a region-wide slide. A fair advance in U.S. equities on Friday was trumped by mixed results from China's manufacturing and services sectors," analyst Justino Calaycay of Accord Capital Equities Corp. said in his daily stock market comment. Given these developments, Calaycay said investors opted to liquidate winning positions snapping a three-session run although the bulls managed to fight back to trim down Monday's losses to just 17 points. The composite index in fact went to as low as 6,370.76 before recovering some of its losses to close at the 6,400 level. "The immediate recovery off the day's low is indicative of investors' outlook for earnings which continues to trickle in the days ahead," Calaycay said. Stocks in the 30-company index were mostly down. These include Ayala Land, Inc., Alliance Global Group, Inc., and Ayala Corp