Market fall likely to continue

MANILA, Philippines - The stock market’s decline will likely continue this week following the benchmark index’s plunge below the support level, snapping the five-month upward trend.

“For this week, the downtrend would continue as the main index dropped below the 6,750 support level,” Freya Natividad, investment analyst at Papa Securities, said in a phone interview.

“On a technical perspective, we saw a breakdown from the five-month upward trend channel, breaching the 6,650 support level we have previously mentioned,” said Joyce Anne J. Ramos, analyst at AB Capital Securities Inc.

This signals a potential consolidation of prices or a fall to its next support level at 6,625.55, Ramos said.

Week-on-week, the Philippine Stock Exchange index sank 2.4 percent or 163.68 points to finish at 6,647.65, marking the third straight weekly decline of the bellwether index.

Investors unloaded stocks following the release of economic growth data, which showed that Philippine gross domestic product (GDP) rose 5.7 percent in the first quarter.

It is below the consensus estimate of 6.4 percent and slower than 7.7 percent uptick in the first quarter of 2013. Government officials said the economy was weighed down by natural disasters late last year.