Profit taking snaps 5-day rally in Philippine stocks

Profit taking on Thursday capped the Philippine stock market's five-day rally. The bellwether Philippine Stock Exchange index lost 1.10 percent or 81.26 points to 7,310.94. The broader all-share index shed 1.2 percent or 54.61 points to 4,512.47. Trading volume reached 2.43 billion shares worth 11.47 billion pesos (278.45 million U.S. dollars) 137 stocks declining, 44 advancing, and 34 unchanged. All counters were down. "The composite index slid off its record high today following a five-day rally that sent the bourse to a new high thrice," DBP- Daiwa Securities, Inc. said in its daily stock market comment. The five-day rally has sent the index to overbought levels as it is currently trading at 22.10x earnings already. Thursday's drop also coincided with the end of the first quarter earning report season. Some of the stocks that were sold down were those with unfavorable corporate developments. These include San Miguel Corp. which dived by 5.45 percent and Megaworld Corp. Both companies were among those taken out of the MSCI Philippine index. On the other hand, Metro Pacific Investments Corp., which was added to the MSCI Philippine index, closed higher. Newly-opened casino Bloomberry Corp. also gained 1.76 percent after the company reported a total revenue of 758.3 million pesos (18.42 million U.S. dollars) from its Solaire casino in first 15 days of its operations.