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MANILA - In the absence of local leads, Philippine share prices on Tuesday glided with Wall Street's overnight descent following the International Monetary Fund's move to cut its global growth forecast and disappointing retail sales.
At the Philippine Stock Exchange, the composite index shed 12.87 points or 0.24 percent to finish at 5,285.12.
Decliners beat advancers, 109 to 54, while 41 stocks were unchanged. A total of 2 billion stocks worth P4.99 billion changed hands.
"Sentiments swayed with trends overseas after Wall Street closed weaker overnight. This is in the absence of local leads," said Freya Natividad, investment analyst at 2TradeAsia.com.
Overnight, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 49.88 points or 0.39 percent to 12,727.21 after the IMF trimmed its forecast for global economic growth to 3.9 percent in 2013 from an earlier estimate of 4.1 percent and warned it could get worse if Europe would not take aggressive actions to resolve its debt crisis.
Also dampening sentiment was data from the Commerce department showing that retail sales slumped for the third straight month in June with economists projecting a slight increase.
The mining and oil counter paced the local market's decline, losing 1.18 percent.
"We were only down by a few points but really, the one drag is mining. The problem on the new mining law is not on the existing but the prospective mines and having to wait for Congress to come out with new laws on revenue sharing," said Joseph Roxas, president of Eagle Equities Inc.
The benchmark index pared its losses in the last few minutes of trading on bargain hunting as investors awash with cash started collecting issues that are expected to post strong growth for the semester, Natividad said.
Actively traded stocks were Ayala Corp., PLDT, Metrobank, Ayala Land and Security Bank.
The biggest gainers were SPC Power, Alaska Milk and Cyber Bay, while Pancake House, Mabuhay Holdings and ATN Holdings were the top losers.
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