Market Skim Through: 17 September

The PSEi gained 0.66% yesterday to close at 6,344.14. Volume was Php10.07 billion. Foreign investors were net buyers at Php 1.34 billion. Steady foreign buying that is unexpected given the upcoming FEM meeting. The natural move was for them to be on the sidelines, but they might be moving already based on what they believe as the amount of tapering. I will still keep my minimum 30% cash position though.

TSI is the center of another sad case of people at Financemanila taking advantage of co-forumers. After a ceiling move, a press release was sent out detailing a rights price way lower than ceiling. This price was predicted by other bloggers, but FMS mainstays continued to hype TSI, one even saying that Emperador/TSI is a future blue chip. There are moneygrabbers in forums, that's a fact. This is now our own version of boiler rooms.  

Other observations: 

BPI is silently recovering (this was out of my radar the past few weeks). Will this go back to 100 PhP soon?

MBT was red, but not terribly red. It was being pushed up every time there's a threat to go below 85. This will be green tomorrow.

BDO now seems the laggard among the top 3 banks. This is still trading [relatively] sideways, will it surge up soon? 

ICT is another of the few stocks that already went back or exceeded its level during the heavenly days at 7300-7400. Investors probably believe the promise of ICT's expansion, operating ports in different parts of the globe. 

In everyone's mind of course is the QE tapering that should be announced early tomorrow. My bet is that any reduction in bond buying greater than 20 B is dangerous to us--another huge sell-off will happen. While any number below 10 B is expected/good; this uptrend/recovery should continue. Between 10B - 20B is a puzzle; we dont know if all the foreign funds will have a unanimous move at this range.  

Market Skim Through, September 2: Locals took profit, volume returned to ghost-month low

There was obvious profit-taking by locals on stocks that jumped +10% last Friday and Thursday. AGI, GTCAP, dipped deep in the morning before going green in the afternoon. These stocks, including SM, could have profit-taking again in the morning. If youre still holding, it's up to you how much you believe in the stock for the next two weeks, and against the volatility of the market.

Stocks like ICT and RLC were never bought up after profit-taking (unlike AGI, which have 100 M PhP of foreign-buying at closing), so they remained red throughout the day. I'll choose to stay on the sidelines on these index stocks, although ICT should be interesting if it goes 88 again. It has 'relatively' consistent foreign support this year. 

We're negative 0.22% at the end of the day, but some are calling it 'virtually unchanged' primarily because our volume returned to a ghost-month average 5 B PhP (we're more than double this amount the past 4 days). Is it range-trading time once again, or will fengshui-following fund managers really wake-up buying left and right by end of Ghost Month on September 4? 

	Stock Code	Last	Change	%Change	Value
1	IS	0.0400	-0.0050	-11.11%	24,100
2	CA	45.0000	-5.0000	-10.00%	10,350
3	PXP	11.0600	-0.9400	-7.83%	892,078
4	PHA	0.2700	-0.0200	-6.90%	5,400
5	SINO	0.2800	-0.0200	-6.67%	20,100
6	BCB	8.0000	-0.5000	-5.88%	251,460
7	STR	3.6400	-0.2100	-5.45%	36,350
8	OPM	0.0180	-0.0010	-5.26%	1,647,000
9	ICT	90.0000	-5.0000	-5.26%	86,145,904
10	WPI	0.3800	-0.0200	-5.00%	14,600
11	UBP	117.0000	-6.0000	-4.88%	49,551
12	OPMB	0.0200	-0.0010	-4.76%	1,656,000
13	ICTV	0.4000	-0.0200	-4.76%	106,650
14	MJC	2.1000	-0.1000	-4.55%	430,500
15	SHNG	3.1500	-0.1300	-3.96%	116,050
16	APX	2.9300	-0.1200	-3.93%	263,700
17	RLC	20.0000	-0.8000	-3.85%	28,363,545
18	LCB	0.5600	-0.0200	-3.45%	536,750
19	ANI	5.5000	-0.1900	-3.34%	38,605
20	ELI	0.9300	-0.0300	-3.12%	736,23