Stocks, peso end week slightly lower
Stocks ended with slim losses on Friday, a day after the US Federal Reserve raised its interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point.
The Philippine Stock Exchange index closed at 6,850.71 down 4.60 points. Volume reached 1.64 billion shares valued at P9.56 billion from the previous day’s 1.42 billion shares worth P8.70 billion.
Foreign selling logged P7.45 billion while buying reached P6.51 billion.
The peso finished trades at P49.92 against the US dollar from Thursday’s P49.96 on lower volume at the Philippine Dealing System. Turnover was $347.2 million from the previous day’s $438.9 million.
Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III, in a statement Thursday, said “this Federal Reserve hike has long been anticipated and that speculation over this move has been one major cause of the market jitters that have riled financial markets across the globe in recent weeks.”
Dominguez said normalization of the interest rate regime in the US will likely have a calming effect on the markets in the long haul. DMS
