GOOD NEWS: PH stock market, one of the best performing global markets in 2014

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Investors and would-be-investors in the PH stock market must be excited to hear this great news! Confidence in the vibrant PH economy has not faded, to date!

The Philippine stock market landed number 7 on the list of the best performing global markets in 2014. It had an increase of 22.01%, with benchmark year-end-performance set at December 23, 2014; this means the PH stock exchange index's performance may be higher than what was recorded by CNN on the last trading day, December 29; that's around (22.01% + 0.62%) = a whooping 22.63%!The PH stock market even outpaced that of neighboring Indonesia's (20.24%) at number 9.

Image Courtesy: CNN

For the common tao, or in layman's term (well, also as how a non-Economics student like me understands haha), this only means that more investors are interested to pour their cash into public companies because they know these companies may be regional economic giants. Not only are they interested, but they are optimistic that the promising economic success story of the Philippines will steal the international spotlight soon. However, here's a caveat, the article only mentioned 74 big markets; the others have not been included in the list (there are more than 190 nations in the world!).

Leading the list of top performing international markets are Argentina (54.51%) and economic giant China (43.32%). It may be recalled that this year's most valuable tech startup is Xiaomi, a Chinese smartphone maker which overtook Samsung in terms of sales units (in some countries that Samsun formerly dominated) for the first time in years, valued at 45 billion USD.

The worst global markets with biggest losses in 2014 include those of Greece (-26.62%) and Russia (-44.9%) which made headlines this year for annexing Ukraine's region Crimea. It's believed that Russia's on a recession today as an effect of the collapse of the oil prices worldwide (due to increased US supplies) and the economic sanctions imposed by countries against the political and military struggles ongoing at the proximity of Russia's borders.

Philippine stocks rise at start of 2011

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.