Stocks rise on Wall Street rally

MANILA, Philippines — Philippine shares rose yesterday, taking cues from Wall Street’s rally.

The Philippine Stock Exchange index (PSEi) closed at 6,208.83, up by 25.20 points or 0.41 percent while the broader All Shares index finished at 3,314.60, up by 9.28 points or 0.28 percent.

The sectoral gauges were mixed with financials, industrial, and services finishing in green territory while property, mining, and oil and holding firms ending in the red.

Total value turnover reached P3.9 billion. Market breadth was negative, 86 to 80 while 43 issues were unchanged.

Michael Ricafort of Yuchengco-owned Rizal Commercial Banking Corp., attributed the market’s rise to the US dollar-peso exchange rate which hit a new 3.5-month low to close at 55.39 against the dollar.

Meanwhile, Asian shares were mostly higher yesterday after a rally on Wall Street, led by gains in Microsoft following its announcement that it was hiring Sam Altman, former CEO of OpenAI, the ChatGPT maker.

US futures were higher while oil prices fell.

Chinese markets were lifted by a report in the financial magazine Caixin that regulators have drafted a list of property developers who will be able to tap low-cost financing. The moves to facilitate more lending come as the real estate industry remains mired in a crisis brought on by a crackdown on excessive borrowing and worsened by a broad economic slowdown.

Investors are convinced that inflation is cooling enough for the Federal Reserve to finally be done with its market-crunching hikes to interest rates. Traders also are moving up their expectations for when the Fed can actually begin cutting interest rates.

Despite Fed officials saying they may keep rates high for a while to ensure high inflation is definitively beaten, traders are thinking the first cut to rates can happen by early summer or maybe even by March. Cuts to rates tend to act like steroids for financial markets and offer oxygen across the financial system.

The Thanksgiving holiday means the US government will release its weekly update on jobless claims on Wednesday instead of the usual Thursday. Other than that, the release of the minutes from the Fed’s latest policy meeting on Tuesday and preliminary reports on US business activity on Friday are among the highlights.