With a high expectation for a gracious, saving year for equities, investors snapped up stocks leading to a New Year rise in Asian indexes, including that of the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) on Monday, this year's first trading day.
PSE's index rose up 14.07 points or 0.33 percent ending a good 4,215.21. The biggest gaining sector was the industrial sector, firming up with 2.54 percent. Value turnover was relatively low at 3.825 billion due to the holiday hangover.
Meanwhile, 79 advancers beat 54 decliners and 30 stocks remain unchanged.
In-demand stocks came from Manila Electric Co., Metro Pacific Investments Corp., Cyber Bay Corp., Aboitiz Power Corp., San Miguel Corp., Metropolitan Bank & Trust Co., SM Investments Corp., Nickel Asia Corp., Petron Corp., First Philippine Holdings Corp., Cebu Air Inc., San Miguel Corp. preferred shares and Megaworld Corp.
Dealers said investors hastily took up shares of Meralco and MPIC, the two most actively traded stocks for this day, on expectations that the First Pacific group could extract more values out of Meralco.
The decliners include Alliance Global Group Inc., DMCI Holdings Inc., Atlas Consolidated Mining & Development Corp., Energy Development Corp., Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co., Philex Mining Corp. and Ayala Land Inc.
